The Mountains Sing

'An epic account of Viet Nam's painful 20th-century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling... Moving and riveting.' Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer 

Ha Noi, 1972. Huong and her grandmother, Tr?n Di?u Lan, cling to one another in their improvised shelter as American bombs fall around them. For Tr?n Di?u Lan, forced to flee the family farm with her six children decades earlier as the Communist government rose to power in the North, this experience is horribly familiar. Seen through the eyes of these two unforgettable women, The Mountains Sing captures their defiance and determination, hope and unexpected joy. 

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Vi?t Nam, celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguy?n’s richly lyrical debut weaves between the lives of a grandmother and granddaughter to paint a unique picture of a country pushed to breaking point, and a family who refuse to give up.

Selected as a Best Book of 2020 by NB Magazine * BookBrowse * Buzz Magazine * NPR * Washington Independent Review of Books * Real Simple * She Reads * A Hindu's View * Thoughts from a Page

Review

'A glorious novel which sweeps across land, generations and hearts... A rare gem that I will never forget.'

-- The Write Review;

'[An] absorbing, stirring novel... Que Mai contains her saga with a poet's discipline, crafting spare and unsparing sentences, and uplifts it with a poet's antenna for beauty in the most desolate circumstances. She evokes the landscape hauntingly, as a site of loss so profound it assumes the quality of fable.'

New York Times Book Review

'A sweeping story that positions Vietnamese life within the rich and luminous history of national epics like The Tale of Ki u and The Iliad. Expansive in scope and feeling, The Mountains Sing is a feat of hope, an unflinchingly felt inquiry into the past, with the courageous storytelling of the present.'

Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

'The Mountains Sing is an epic account of Vi t Nam s painful ;century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling. Through the travails of one family, Nguy n Phan Qu Mai brings us close to the horrors of famine, war, and class struggle. But in this moving and riveting novel, she also shows us a post-war Vi t Nam, a country of hope and renewal, home to a people who have never given up.'

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Sympathizer

'A Vietnamese poet conjures history and fate in a luminous tale that resonates across generations as one family grapples with the psychic residue of war.'

O, The Oprah Magazine

'A luminous, complex family narrative..Oprah Magazine. Que Mai [has] an astute and graceful ability to sustain contradictory truths about war, displacement, aesthetic representations, and human nature... The Mountains Sing affirms the individual s right to think, read, and act according to a code of intuitive civility, borne out of Vietnam's fertile and compassionate cultural heriOprah Magazinetage.'

NPR

'A sweeping saga... Alternating between lyricism and blunt reality, Nguy n Phan Qu Mai gives us a vivid look at Vietnam from within.'

People Magazine

About the Author

Dr Nguy?n Phan Qu? Mai is an award-winning Vietnamese poet and novelist. She is the author of eleven books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Her books in Vietnamese have received the 2010 Poetry of the Year Award from the Hanoi Writers Association, the Capital’s Literature & Arts Award, and First Prize in the Poetry Competition celebrating 1,000 Years of Hanoi. Her debut novel and first book in English, The Mountains Sing, is an International Bestseller, runner-up in the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Best Debut Award, Winner of the Blogger's Book Prize 2021, Winner of the 2021 International Book Awards, Winner of the 2021 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and Winner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for "a work of exceptional quality" and for "contribution to peace and reconciliation".