Parallels

Widely considered as the best Vietnamese gay fiction, Parallels is Vũ Đình Giang’s debut novel.

G.g, H, and Kan are young, and homosexual. They soon find themselves caught up in a ménage à trois that forces them to grapple with devastating consequences rooted in wounds from their private pasts. Embedded in violence, insanity, betrayals, homoeroticism and surrealism, Parallels is a riveting account of how carnal and emotional scars can determine how we love and hurt each other; an exquisite début that introduces readers to the astonishing gifts of Vũ Đình Giang’s imaginative power and distinctive style.

A hidden gem in contemporary Vietnamese literature, Parallels draws likely comparisons to pages of Alan Hollinghurst, Édouard Louis, and Garth Greenwell.

Intense, complex and cinematic, this is the first gay novel from Vietnam to be available in the English language.

Praise for Parallels

‘Parallels is a Wong Kar-wai movie of a novel: stylish and cool, erotic and yet touched with violence. An iconic work of Vietnamese queer literature now set to be embraced by the world.’
–Anton Hur, Korean writer & translator, author of Toward Eternity

‘Reading through Vũ Đình Giang’s Parallels, translated by Khải Q. Nguyễn, is like treading through a strange swamp. The book fearlessly obscures itself with its use of the epistolary forms, but it also charms us with the subtle narrative threads connecting the lives of its characters. The characters also resist formula: they are cryptic and erudite, cultured and self-sabotaging, complex and humane.’
–Norman Pasaribu Erikson, poet, translator and author of My Dream Job