Past Events › Books

FVH Bookclub members For December the book we will be discussing is: The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen 'From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never…

FVH Bookclub members For January the book we will be discussing is: Dumb Luck by Vu Trong Phung Dumb Luck, by the brilliant, controversial, and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung, is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late-colonial era. First published in Hanoi in 1936, it follows the absurd and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond named Red-haired Xuân. As it charts Xuân's fantastic social ascent, the novel provides a…

‘Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hô Xuân Huong’ and Trinh Cong Son’s Lyrics FVH Bookclub members For March 2019 we will be reading Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hô Xuân Huong’ Ho Xuan Huong—whose name translates as "Spring Essence"—is one of the most important and popular poets in Vietnam. A concubine, she became renowned for her poetic skills, writing subtly risque poems which used double-entendre and sexual innuendo as a vehicle for social, religious, and political commentary. and Trinh Cong…