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The Mountains Sing
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Novel, 2020
A Hanoi family across the 20th century, covering land reform, famine and the American War through a grandmother and granddaughter.
Books set in Vietnam
Five books that put you in Vietnam. Four are by writers from Vietnam and set there, starting with The Mountains Sing and The Tale of Kieu. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
About the literature of Vietnam
Vietnam's most celebrated work is The Tale of Kieu, Nguyễn Du's nineteenth-century verse epic, still central to national identity. It was written in Nôm, a script adapted from Chinese characters; for centuries scholars also wrote in classical Chinese, and today Vietnamese uses a Latin-based alphabet. Folk verse known as ca dao runs alongside the written tradition, and writers with Vietnamese roots now also publish in English.
Le Ly Hayslip's When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is a memoir of growing up in a farming village in central Vietnam during the war. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's The Mountains Sing traces a Hanoi family across the twentieth century through a grandmother and her granddaughter. Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer-winning The Sympathizer opens with the fall of Saigon in 1975, before its communist double agent's story moves to America.
By writers from Vietnam
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The Tale of Kieu
Nguyễn Du
Poetry, 1820. Translated from Vietnamese by Huỳnh Sanh Thông
Vietnam's classic 19th-century verse epic, central to national identity, steeped in Confucian society, folk tradition and the Vietnamese language.
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
Le Ly Hayslip
Memoir, 1989
A woman's memoir of growing up in a Central Vietnam farming village during the war, with peasant life and its upheavals.
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Novel, 2015
Opens in 1975 Saigon during its fall and follows a communist double agent; partly set in Vietnam, but mostly in America.
Wider picks
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Vietnam.
Blue Dragon, White Tiger: A Tet Story
Tran Van Dinh
Novel, 1983
Wider pick: Vietnamese author, but largely set among exiles in the United States
A Vietnamese exile's story shows how the 1968 Tet Offensive and the war's divisions reached Vietnamese families, with memories of home.
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