Mysterious, unsettling, but darkly poetic, this magical realist novel echoes the timelessness of García Marquez and Faulkner.

Set in the mythic village of Phan, the novel follows a tangled web of characters haunted by buried secrets, ancestral curses, and an unnamed historical trauma. Two feuding families vie for control of a mysterious treasure said to lie beneath the land, while a former soldier wanders the village, driven by fractured memories, and unfulfilled desires.

Like a fragmented but lyrical nightmare, Nguyễn Bình Phương evokes the disorientation of a society grappling with the aftershocks of war, repression, and silence. The title speaks to a generation whose youth was lost before it began—children who age prematurely under the weight of unspoken histories.

Format: Paperback

Author: Phuong, Ngyuen Binh

Publisher: Central Books

Pub Date: May 1, 2026

ISBN: 9781917233095

Evening House Books

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The Young Die Old

Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales Volume 1

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