A Winner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship, a NY Times Editors’ Choice Selection, & a finalist of the Audie 2021 Best Audiobook of the Year
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War.
Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.
Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness.
“Balances the unrelenting devastation of war with redemptive moments of surprising humanity.” —Booklist
“Lyrical and at once heart-wrenching and hopeful.” —NPR
“Epic in scope, and a celebration of the human spirit, The Mountains Sing is a story you won't soon forget.” —PopSugar
“A poignant and vivid portrayal of a brutal slice of Vietnamese history from a perspective that is so rarely heard abroad: that of the Vietnamese themselves. We are starkly reminded of how those wars—and wars everywhere—wash over and drown both the guilty and innocent alike.” —Baingana
(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)