Nov 08, 2014 by Lan Cao

Historical Novel Society, November 2014 view online article

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Nov 08, 2014 by Lan Cao

Author Exposure, November 2014 view online article

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Oct 10, 2014 by Lan Cao

The Los Angeles Review of Books view online article

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Oct 08, 2014 by Lan Cao

DiaCRITICS, October 2014 view online article

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Oct 08, 2014 by Lan Cao

The Daily Beast, October 2014 view online article

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Sep 28, 2014 by Lan Cao

The VVA Veteran Books in Review II, September 2014 view online article

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Sep 14, 2014 by Lan Cao

South China Morning Post, September 2014 view online article

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Sep 11, 2014 by Lan Cao

DiaCRITICS, September 2014 view online article

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Aug 18, 2014 by Lan Cao

Biographile, August 2014 view online article

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Aug 02, 2014 by Lan Cao

The Lotus and the Storm. Lan Cao. Aug. 2014. 400p. Viking, hardcover, $27.95 (9780670016921).

For all that has been written about the Vietnam War, little has come from the perspective of the South Vietnamese whose lives were shattered in the conflict. Cao looks to rectify that imbalance in this complex tale of a father and daughter who fled to America, forever marked by the war and its aftermath. The novel, which is informed by the author’s own life, spans major events such as the Tet Offensive and the exodus from Vietnam following the Communist takeover of Saigon. But the immersive core of this story is on a much more domestic scale, as both Mai and her father, Minh, struggle with the...

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Jul 31, 2014 by Lan Cao

THE LOTUS AND THE STORM, by Lan Cao, Viking August 2014

Written with acute psychological insight and poetic flair, this deeply moving novel illuminates the ravages of war as experienced by a South Vietnamese family.

In a rewarding follow-up to her well-received debut, Monkey Bridge (1997), the author returns to the conflict that shaped her own destiny before she was airlifted from her native Saigon to live in Virginia. Here, she shows what happens to a family of four—a South Vietnamese airborne commander, his beautiful wife and their two young daughters—as the war challenges loyalties with betrayals. The story is narrated by two characters: Mai, the younger daughter, who recalls her girlhood as the war intensified from her current home in Virginia;...

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Jul 02, 2014 by Lan Cao

DiaCRITICS, July 2014 view online article

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Jun 30, 2014 by Lan Cao

July 2014 Cao's long-awaited follow-up to Monkey Bridge is a sprawling saga that follows one family through the Vietnam War almost to the present day. Minh is a South Vietnamese army commander whose wife, Quy, comes from a prominent land-owning family. As the political winds shift and the Americans become more entrenched in the military action in Vietnam, the family's fortunes sometimes seem connected to Minh's uneasy friendship with Phong, one of the leaders of the 1963 coup. Much of the story is told in flashback from 2006, when Minh and his younger daughter Mai, who suffers from mental illness caused by childhood traumas, are living in Virginia. VERDICT The story of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese point of view,...

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Mar 14, 2014 by Lan Cao

March 2014 In 1997, Cao triumphed with the debut Monkey Bridge, a multi-award finalist that even Michiko Kakutani admired. Now she's returned with another story illuminating our experience in the Vietnam War. Living in an insular Vietnamese American community with her father, a former South Vietnamese commander, Mai uncovers unsettling truths about what really happened to her family during that war.

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