The Zenith - Hardcover

Huong, Duong Thu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670023752 ISBN 13: 9780670023752

Publisher: Viking, 2012

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Duong Thu Huong, author of Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name (both from Penguin) is an advocate of human rights and democratic political reform, and was expelled from the Communist Party and imprisoned without trial in 1991. The Vietnamese government has effectively banned all of her novels. She lives in Hanoi.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0670023752
• ISBN 13: 9780670023752
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 528