‘Dust Child’ with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Wed 26 Apr 2023
7:00pm at Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, 14-15 John Street, Bath, BA1 2JL
Book + Ticket gives you a free ticket with a copy of the book, all tickets include 15% off any books purchased on the night, a glass of wine, author interview, Q&A and signing.
Other ways to book:
Email books@mrbsemporium.com, call 01225 331155 or pop into the shop at 14-15 John Street, Bath. BA1 2JL.
We couldn’t be more excited to welcome award-winning Vietnamese writier Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai to Mr B’s to discuss her incredible new novel Dust Child, a richly poetic saga set during the war and in present day Việt Nam. We have been huge fans of Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai since the release of The Mountains Sing, which swept its way across the team and immediately landed on Tess’s favourites shelf in store. We hope you’ll join us for what is sure to be a very special evening.
About the Book:
In 1969, two sisters from rural Viet Nam leave their parents’ home and travel to the bustling city of Sai Gon. Soon their lives are swept up in the unstoppable flames of a war that is blazing through their country.
They begin working as ‘bar girls’ in one of the drinking dens frequented by American GIs, forced to accept that survival now might mean compromising the values they once treasured. Decades later, two men wander through the streets and marketplaces of a very different Sai Gon: modern, forward-looking, healing. Phong – the son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman – embarks on a search to find his parents and a way out of Viet Nam, while Dan, a war veteran, hopes that retracing the steps of his youth will ease the PTSD that has plagued him for decades.
When the lives of these unforgettable characters converge, each is forced to reckon with the explosive events of history that still ripple through their lives. Now they must work out what it takes to move forward in this richly poetic saga from Nguyen Phan Que Mai at her very best.
‘Dazzling. Sharply drawn and hauntingly beautiful.’ Elif Shafak, Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees