The Tapestries: A Novel - Softcover

Nguyen, Kien

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316735604 ISBN 13: 9780316735605

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2003

Synopsis

- The novel was inspired by the life of the author's grandfather, a tapestry weaver in the last imperial court of Vietnam.- A selection of Minnesota's Talking Volumes book club.- A brilliantly textured historical romance that is sure to be a favorite with reading groups throughout the country.- Hardcover ISBN: 0-316-28441-6

About this title

About the Author:

Kien Nguyen left Vietnam in 1985 through the United Nations' Orderly Departure Program. He lives in New York City and is the author of one previous book, the highly acclaimed memoir The Unwanted.

From Publishers Weekly:

Nguyen follows his acclaimed memoir, The Unwanted (2001), with a daringly complex and vividly imagined debut novel about a boy who fights to reclaim his family's royal legacy in Vietnam at the turn of the century. Seven-year-old Dan Nguyen is married in childhood to a 27-year-old family servant named Ven, who hides and protects the boy when rivals come to execute Dan's parents. But Dan's strange union with Ven is disrupted when Ven contracts malaria and she is forced to sell him into slavery to the mayor's family. Dan's stint as a slave proves fateful, though, when he becomes the personal servant of the beautiful Tai May and the two fall in love. In spite of Dan's station, Tai May chooses him over a wealthy young suitor. When the spurned suitor spies on Dan and finds out about his marriage to Ven, Dan is forced to flee the family. The dizzying intricacy of the plotting occasionally becomes a bit overwhelming as Nguyen tracks Ven's tragic fate and Dan's search for Tai May while attempting to piece together a treasure map that has been laid out as an interlocking series of body tattoos. But the beauty of Nguyen's stately, ornate prose-perfectly suited to the rigidly formal customs of Vietnamese royalty-serves him well as the complex plot unfolds. The scope of the tale and its grace and power make this a formidable first novel.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0316735604
• ISBN 13: 9780316735605
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336