A singular work of witness, inspiration, and courage,The Lotus and the Stormmarks the welcome return of Lan Cao's pitch-perfect voice, telling the story only she can tell.
Lan Cao is the author of Monkey Bridge. She lives in Southern California.
Praise for The Lotus and the Storm
“Written with acute psychological insight and poetic flair, this
deeply moving novel illuminates the ravages of war as experienced
by a South Vietnamese family. In a rewarding follow-up to her
well-received debut, Monkey Bridge, the author returns to the
conflict that shaped her own destiny before she was airlifted from
her native Saigon to live in Virginia. Here, she shows what happens
to a family of four—a South Vietnamese airborne commander, his
beautiful wife and their two young daughters—as the war challenges
loyalties with betrayals. . . . A novel that humanizes the war in a
way that body counts and political analyses never will.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“For all that has been written about the Vietnam War, little has
come from the perspective of the South Vietnamese whose lives were
shattered in the conflict. Cao looks to rectify that imbalance in
this complex tale of a father and daughter who fled to America,
forever marked by the war and its aftermath. . . . Evocative and
elegiac, The Lotus and the Storm is a stunning accomplishment.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“It is when she describes moments of surprising intimacy that Cao
shines. . . . She chronicles her characters’ lives with clarity and
suspense.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Dazzlingly, Lan Cao captures Vietnam’s dichotomy as both an
enchanting realm and a place of carnage. . . . The Lotus and the
Storm is both epic and intimate. . . . offering a rarely discussed
perspective on the Vietnam War.”
—Shelf Awareness
“A novel about reconciliation, and about that generation of
Vietnamese for whom the future supersedes the past . . . an
impassioned and powerful attempt to understand a chapter of
history.”
—Bookpage
“The Lotus and the Storm is part beautiful family saga, part
coming-of-age story, part love story, but above all a searing
indictment of the American campaign in Vietnam and its incalculable
toll on generations past and future. A powerful read from start to
end.”
—Khaled Hosseini, author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite
Runner
“A profoundly moving novel about the shattering effects of war on a
young girl, her family, and her country. In sensuous and searing
detail, Lan Cao brings Saigon’s past vividly to life through the
eyes of her child narrator, Mai, following the girl and her father
halfway around the world, to a suburb in Virginia, where forty
years later, Mai’s trauma unravels. In this fractured world where
old wars, loves, and losses live on, The Lotus and the Storm is a
passionate testament to the truth that the past is the
present—inseparable, inescapable, enduring.”
—Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
“A heartwrenching and heartwarming epic about war and love, hurt
and healing, losing and rediscovering homelands. Through the
mesmerizing voices of a Vietnamese-born father and his daughter
resettled in Virginia’s ‘Little Saigon’ after the fall of Saigon,
Lan Cao dramatizes landmark battles in the Vietnam War and the toll
such battles take on winners and losers. The Lotus and the Storm
establishes Lan Cao as a world-class writer.”
—Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine and The Middleman and Other
Stories
“Lan Cao is not only one of the finest of the American writers who
sprang from and profoundly understand the war in Vietnam and the
Vietnamese diaspora, but also one of our finest American writers,
period. The Lotus and the Storm is a brilliant novel that
illuminates the human condition shared by us all.”
—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent
from a Strange Mountain
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