Terre des oublis (i)

from novelist Duong Thu Huong, translator Phan Huy Duong, and publisher Sabine Wespieser

I, of XXVII. I take it that editor-in-chief Sabine Wespieser specifies such numerals in all her books as the Romans carved them on a monument, for dignity.

First paragraph. It has 1 sentence only.

So do 28 of the 74 paragraphs in the first 10 of 40 pages total in this chapter I. All these 28 paragraphs use active verbs, 18 of them in speech and 10 in plain action like this first sentence of the novel.

The other paragraphs are blocks of prose, some dominating 2 and 1 half pages. Novelist Duong Thu Huong has written even more movies, where action and dialogue move you along from scene to scene, than novels.

This one’s next chapter, II, also starts with a paragraph of one active sentence. So do II and IV. Then VII does but any pattern dissolves as the story plunges on into those blocks of cinema, with exactly 1 more chapter beginning with 1 sentence, the penultimate XXVI.

First word of the first sentence of the first paragraph of chapter I is Une. It is the indefinite article, feminine, singular, but une means one. You can catch a sense of it the English construction “one Duong Thu Huong” had no one ever heard of this one before.

One rain. One strange rain. Not a bizarre or inattendue, unexpected, or unique rain, although this rain is strange in those ways and translator Phan Huy Duong commands all those French adjectives, but a strange rain, same word as for a stranger and for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It hits, or hit in the historical present, batters really, as in our crime of battery, raining blows, as from a battery of artillery onto the earth, our planet, also the earth grown from rain hitting rock for eons as the dust grew into the terrane we stand on, terroir, the earth that feeds creation,

full in the month of June. This rain is bizarre, unexpected, unique because we are in the middle of Viet Nam in the hills where all that month hot wind from Laos dries the forest. Huong does not say whether it comes from that foreign country or her own.

A strange rain pounded the ground in high June.

This was the first Viet Nam letter of 2 so far addressing Terre Des Oublis from from novelist Duong Thu Huong, translator Phan Huy Duong, and publisher Sabine Wespieser. The second posted on August 11, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.