About the Book
""Night, Again" is fresh, invigorating work. Taken all together, these brief prose pieces have the scope of a fine novel."-"The Philadelphia Inquirer"
"Not only are these stories, almost without exception, very strong on purely literary grounds, but they also provide an invaluable firsthand documentation of a society undergoing rapid change."-"The Times Literary Supplement"
"Unsentimental and sensual, the stories in "Night, Again" are imbued with sly wit and haunting music. The range of style and subject matter is impressive. Out of the ruins of war, these living writers demonstrate their profound resilience, poetic vision, and luminous artistry."-Jessica Hagedorn
"Carefully chosen stories from writers whose styles and subject matter exhibit real range. . . . [T]hese pieces suggest a nuanced and decidedly polyvalent view of Vietnam."-"A. Magazine"
"A forceful and stunning compendium by a talented editor, "Night, Again" is unquestionably one of the finest literary entries in years from the new Asia and is essential for modern Asia-Pacific collections."-"Choice"
Praised for its documentary importance and literary brilliance when it was first published in 1996 and now updated with two new stories, "Night, Again" offers us the unique opportunity to see the Vietnamese through their own eyes and surprises us with its playfully ironic portraits.
Awarded a Pew Fellowship in 1993 and hosted in Certaldo, Italy, as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and of Cities of Asylum, Linh Dinh is an accomplished author, poet, and translator. He has written two collections of stories, "Fake House" and "Blood and Soap," and two books of poems, "All Around What Empties Out"and "American Tatts," His work has been anthologized in "The Best American Poetry 2000," "The Best American Poetry 2004," and "Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present,"
A couple's scheme to get rich by killing their father backfires, leaving them in charge of a cripple. In heaven, a baby, dead through neglect, tells his playmates: "Life down there is just one long sleep." A young soldier, saved by a stranger, can never again find her to thank her. A man carries a massive clock. Using a variety of techniques and styles, in this collection of twelve short stories contemporary Vietnamese writers--edited by poet, short story writer, and novelist Linh Dinh--show us Vietnam through their own eyes. Night, Again breaks with the traditional views of the Vietnamese that have focused on the Vietnam War and turns our attention to postwar life in Vietnam. These writers present impressions--at once strange and familiar--of postwar realities.