Memories of a Pure Spring is a mesmerizing portrait of modern Vietnam and its people who struggle to survive under the complexities of a post-war regime. During the Vietnam war, Hung, a well-known composer, becomes enchanted by the voice and beauty of a young peasant girl named Suong. He invites her to join his troupe; she becomes his wife and his star performer. But after the war, Hung loses his job, setting off a series of events that drive him and Suong into a destructive spiral. One of Vietnam's most popular writers, Duong Thu Huong draws on her own experiences to describe life at the battlefront, the conditions of a "re-education" camp, and the texture and rhythm, scents and sounds, of a provincial Vietnamese city. Most of all, she tells a haunting, universal story of failed love.

"Central Vietnam. 1975. A young peasant woman, happily married to a successful farmer, returns to her house in the countryside to find a thong of villagers assembled around her gate. She learns that her first husband - who reportedly died as a martyr and war hero many years earlier - is in fact alive and has returned to claim her. Faced with immense pressure from the community and the Party authorities, she agrees to leave her second husband and their son to live in a squalid shack with the veteran." "This tragic twist of fate sets the stage for Duong Thu Huong's tale of three individuals whose destinies are inextricably linked and irrevocably altered by the absurdity of war. As the riveting story unfolds, each of the parties in this fateful love triangle struggles to reconcile personal happiness with traditional values of duty and selflessness. Together, these characters offer a devastating portrait of a people sacrificed on the altar of war and to a cult of heroism."--BOOK JACKET.

In the sequel to the award-winning Boy O'Boy, it's spring in post-World War II Ottawa and Martin O'Boy has finally found a true home with Grampa Rip. Martin's also found a job, working for the Pure Spring soft drink company. Best of all, he's in love with beautiful Gerty McDowell. But everything's not perfect. Martin lied to kindly Mr. Mirsky, Pure Spring's owner, to get the job. Grampa Rip's brain increasingly goes missing. There's that mysterious, yet oddly familiar, man in the park. There are also Martin's memories, the sudden appearance of famed Soviet defector Igor Gouzensko, and Martin's shady boss, Randy. And worst of all, Randy is robbing Gerty's grandfather, and he's forcing Martin to be his accomplice. Martin's happiness, sense of duty, and love for Gerty collide. Can he find his way through these dire developments? Brian Doyle's fast-paced plot and vivid characterizations, along with the lively colloquial dialogue and period detail, create a rich historical portrait that confirms the author's place as a master storyteller.

A major new novel from the most important Vietnamese author writing today Duong Thu Huong has won acclaim for her exceptional lyricism and psychological acumen, as well as for her unflinching portraits of modern Vietnam and its culture and people. In this monumental new novel she offers an intimate, imagined account of the final months in the life of President Ho Chi Minh at an isolated mountaintop compound where he is imprisoned both physically and emotionally, weaving his story in with those of his wife’s brother-in-law, an elder in a small village town, and a close friend and political ally, to explore how we reconcile the struggles of the human heart with the external world. These narratives portray the thirst for absolute power, both political and otherwise, and the tragic consequences on family, community, and nationhood that can occur when jealousy is coupled with greed or mixed with a lust for power. The Zenith illuminates and captures the moral conscience of Vietnamese leaders in the 1950s and 1960s as no other book ever has, as well as bringing out the souls of ordinary Vietnamese living through those tumultuous times.

The Nobel Prize–winning author of Blindness recalls the days of his youth in Lisbon and the Portuguese countryside in this charming memoir. José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José. Small Memories traces the formation of a man who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world’s most respected writers. Shifting between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this mosaic of memories looks back into the author’s boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family’s blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago’s early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read to poring over a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière.

Memories of a Pure Spring is a mesmerizing portrait of modern Vietnam and its people who struggle to survive under the complexities of a post-war regime. During the Vietnam war, Hung, a well-known composer, becomes enchanted by the voice and beauty of a young peasant girl named Suong. He invites her to join his troupe; she becomes his wife and his star performer. But after the war, Hung loses his job, setting off a series of events that drive him and Suong into a destructive spiral. One of Vietnam's most popular writers, Duong Thu Huong draws on her own experiences to describe life at the battlefront, the conditions of a "re-education" camp, and the texture and rhythm, scents and sounds, of a provincial Vietnamese city. Most of all, she tells a haunting, universal story of failed love.

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