Water: a Chronicle

by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư

Translated by Nguyễn An Lý 

Edited by Deborah Smith

Winner of the PEN Translates Award 2024 

At the heart of this watery ‘chronicle’ is a dual mystery: a holy man on an island empire, once a con artist, and a desperate mother named Phúc (Fortune) seeking his heart to cure her child. The mosaic novel of nine stories circles this enigma like the river’s currents, carrying with it fragments of myth and life from timeless Mekong. A trans woman who wants to be “full”, a shadow bride who wants to be fleshed, a mad woman with a colicky infant, a words-eating-woman shielding her child from a fly apocalypse…. The ghosts and ghouls that reflect upon the water surface may well be the everyday reality of river life, or simply the universal haunting of womanhood.

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