The Tapestries - Softcover

Kien Nguyen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349116431 ISBN 13: 9780349116433

Publisher: Time Warner Books UK, 2004

Synopsis

In this stunning novel based loosely on the life of the author's grandfather, an embroiderer in the court of the last king of Vietnam in the early 1900s, Kien Nguyen reimagines his grandfather's amazing story to weave a tapestry of his own.Dan Nguyen is seven years old when he marries a woman twenty years his senior. More mother than wife, Ven takes care of Dan until the day he leaves his childhood forever - when he witnesses his father's brutal beheading at the hands of the power-hungry mayor. In order to protect Dan until he is old enough to defend his father's honour, Ven hides him as a servant in the house of the enemy, where he falls in love with the one person he can never have - the mayor's beautiful granddaughter, Tai May. Dan's journey from child to slave to embroiderer in the Royal Court, where he has the chance to win Tai May's heart, is a story of spellbinding drama, intrigue, and an unforgettable love affair.

About this title

About the Author:

Kien Nguyen was born in Nhatrang, South Vietnam in 1967. He left Vietnam in 1985 through the United Nations 'Orderly Departure Program'. After spending time at a refugee camp in the Phillippines, Nguyen arrived in the United States. He has written a memoir about his childhood in Vietnam called THE UNWANTED and is currently at work on a second novel.

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: Time Warner Books UK
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0349116431
• ISBN 13: 9780349116433
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 343