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Anam
A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather held without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to
look after the children? A love story? Or a ghost story – a mystery to be solved?
Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten. The grandson mines his family and personal stories to turn over ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, legacy and expectation, ambition and sacrifice. As he sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about: a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?
look after the children? A love story? Or a ghost story – a mystery to be solved?
Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten. The grandson mines his family and personal stories to turn over ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, legacy and expectation, ambition and sacrifice. As he sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about: a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2023
51 people are currently reading
1082 people want to read
About the author
Andre Dao
9 books9 followersAndré Dao is a writer, editor and researcher. His debut novel, Anam, won the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and was published this year by Penguin Random House in Australia and by Picador in the UK. He is the co-founder of Behind the Wire, an oral history project documenting people’s experience of immigration detention, and a producer of the Walkley Award-winning podcast The Messenger.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
July 10, 2024
The protagonist of this novel is a second generation immigrant to Australia of Vietnamese heritage. I am not sure whether he was referred by his name in the novel as it is the first person narrative. But let’s call him Andre after the author. He has just started a young family and has moved to Cambridge, uk to do his PhD. He is the oldest son of the oldest son which is apparently the keeper of family history according the Vietnamese tradition. His paternal grandfather, a Catholic and the supporter of the South, was inprisoned Vietnam for 10 years without a trial. After the release his has spent the last years of his life in emigration with his family in Paris. Andre has always wanted to write a book about his grandparents. But struggled how to approach this.
This is a background. It is indeed the one of those auto-fictional genre-defying pieces on the nature home, belonging, displacement, family and memory etc. There is a whole of mini-industry of recently published books of a similar type. What made this one stand out was his engagement with philosophical underpinnings of these issues. He refers to Levinas, Benjamin, Derrida, Arendt and uniquely to Tran Đuc Thao, a Marxist philosopher educated in France and later prosecuted in Vietnam. And he goes much deeper than simply mentioning their names.
However, it is far from a detached piece of an abstract philosophy or recycled vestiges of an academic research as some other books of this type. It often brings up the transience of an individually lived experience: poignant moments of new parenting, family gatherings or a rare snow in Cambridge.
Another factor that made this novel stand out was its meta-element. In essence, it is not autofiction but meta-autofiction. Throughout the whole book Andre often interrogates his changing motivations for writing it. And he does it with sincerity, honesty and freshness. In addition, his partner, Lauren, takes part in this process. A new mother, who feels lonely and out of place in Cambridge is challenging his preconceptions about his project and holds him to account on its purpose. While he tries to recreate the details of his grandfather’s Vietnam and the circumstances of him ending up in prison, she says:
“The elegiac is apolitical … It sucks the air out of the anger and righteousness you need to change things. It makes a useful thing – a memory of injustice – into a pretty bauble.”
Andre himself is often unflinching in his assessment as well. This is how he remembers the conversations with his grandfather in preparation of the book:
“I remember feeling the distance between us, separated by language and years, but also by my own self-consciousness. I remember listening to him and, at the same time, listening to myself listen: whirring of my own thoughts so loud that I could hardly hear him speak, working double-time to create a layer of interpretation- meaning, justification, misrecognition - between myself and him, so that I was always I and he always he, and we never quite came together.”
And on the other occasion, why he felt compelled to write this book:
“There was also I guess the chance to find something out about myself, who I came from and so on. But the truth is that was only ever a secondary motivation. What I really wanted was to be famous- not even that just recognised, appreciated. I wanted to satisfy my ego. I don’t mean it pejoratively, either - perhaps you too are reading this letter to close up the wounds that make your self less whole. Okay so that’s a dodge - making oneself whole and projecting oneself into the lives and minds of others, these are not the same thing.
So the purpose of creating a factually compelling and accurate tribute to his grandfather and his
time appears to be illusive. He uses a term “built on mud”. How useful is any family story or even history writing if it is emotive. An attempt to collect all the facts to make a complete picture proves an impossible task. All such stories end up built on “mus” of individual recollections. But then they are propped by memory “industrial complex”. That Improves the coherence of the community but often by dehumanising the other add “forgetting” inconvenient bits.
Andre tries to resist all these temptations and the ends up being more about himself, his place in the world, the world itself rather than an accurate family history.
However, nevertheless in the process Andre has succeeded in revealing who was his grandfather. Also he has managed to say a lot about guilt and innocence, collective and individual remembrance, its
difference from history; and inevitability of forgetting, its difference from forgiveness.
Recently I’ve read Parade, a new novel by Rachel Cusk. In the novel she is exploring the question of perception: whether it is possible to perceive without projecting one’s individuality on the result. Or even wider: whether it is at all possible not to have an intentionality, the implied point of view while making a statement either to just a human being or to a wider world, be it artistic, political or even simply observational. In Parade, Cusk comments:
“The writer writes about what he already knows and has decided is there. He pretends he doesn’t know, hasn’t decided. He sells this illusion to the reader, who joins him in the labour of fantasy. G’s conception was the opposite of this. He wanted to be innocent of knowledge. He wanted simply to record.”
G here is a writer and a movie director based on Eric Rohmer. Through him, Cusk seems to hope that an expressed statement can be a simply “record”; perception is otherwise might be “innocent of knowledge”.
Andre seems to echo the question although applied in a different context. And he comes to a very different conclusion about the possibility of “innocent or neutral” perception.
Backed by Tran Đuc Thao’s philosophy, he seems to believe that one’s living experiences create a background and define possibilities of perception. In other words, this creates a field from which one’s mind selects elements to make a picture of a thought; it “gives perception a meaning”. So seeing the same “facts” two people with different “living experiences” might struggle to find a common ground.
“What appears to me as inscrutable, unreasonable, beyond the pale, is absolutely natural to the Anamite (an older generation of political emigrant from Vietnam) necessary even….So there is no such thing as innocent or neutral perception- all perception is immediately situated within the horizon that defines one’s existence. It is little wonder, that even though we perceive the same facts, the Anamite and I will draw contradictory conclusions.
I find this idea if not very original then immensely powerful. In the context of the modern world with its deadly conflicts, turbulent politics, relentless speed and unreliable narratives, it might explain why people looking at the same “facts” come to vastly different conclusions on justice; on the past and its glory or the lack of it; on war and the acceptability or avoidance of its civilian casualties; on necessity of human suffering for the sake of sone abstract concepts or indeed very concrete material resources.
Even perception cannot be innocent. That is why Andre cannot avoid feeling guilty living in Australia with his own personal baggage but also with the baggage of the Australian historical past.
So your home: a place where you can be innocent. But that’s just the thing - you and I can never be innocent in Australia: the only thing worse that a tourist or an immigrant is the coloniser, the stranger who insists: I have always been here.
And when he is at Cambridge at some point he thinks: “Maybe there is a power of proclaiming one’s non-innocence. The advantage of being strangers no illusions about our innocence, about true belonging, as we are tempted to believe back there. I can stop denying that I always felt guilty from birth and after guilty for squandering inheritance. “
As mentioned earlier, his grandfather was a Catholic and a civil functionary of the regime in South Vietnam propped by the Americans at some stage. Later under the communists, he spent ten years in prison without charge in atrocious conditions. But even in the situation with his grandfather Andre eventually thinks: “about complicity, how the innocent like my grandfather, rarely have clean hands?”
This honesty is refreshing. It might take some readers out of their comfort zone or it might illicit just another shrug from the others. That would be unfortunate but not unexpected. The book also contains a letter to his baby daughter when he gets older. And though I found this gesture a bit too symbolic, still, I want to end with the one of his messages:
”There is no such thing as having no choice- I don’t believe in that. Not for me, and not for you. For others, perhaps, in the abstract- the poor have no choice, the radicalised have no choice, the chemically imbalanced have no choice. When I am feeling particularly objective-after bracing reading group on Capatal, say - I might even believe that the rich and powerful have no choice, that they are buffeted by the winds of social forces as much as anyone else. But for you and me I claim the privilege of choosing and being judged for our choosing. Is there any more privilege more bourgeois or more precious?”
More comprehensive, contextually rich review from a member of a diaspora is here:
https://dvan.org/2024/02/book-review-...
This is a background. It is indeed the one of those auto-fictional genre-defying pieces on the nature home, belonging, displacement, family and memory etc. There is a whole of mini-industry of recently published books of a similar type. What made this one stand out was his engagement with philosophical underpinnings of these issues. He refers to Levinas, Benjamin, Derrida, Arendt and uniquely to Tran Đuc Thao, a Marxist philosopher educated in France and later prosecuted in Vietnam. And he goes much deeper than simply mentioning their names.
However, it is far from a detached piece of an abstract philosophy or recycled vestiges of an academic research as some other books of this type. It often brings up the transience of an individually lived experience: poignant moments of new parenting, family gatherings or a rare snow in Cambridge.
Another factor that made this novel stand out was its meta-element. In essence, it is not autofiction but meta-autofiction. Throughout the whole book Andre often interrogates his changing motivations for writing it. And he does it with sincerity, honesty and freshness. In addition, his partner, Lauren, takes part in this process. A new mother, who feels lonely and out of place in Cambridge is challenging his preconceptions about his project and holds him to account on its purpose. While he tries to recreate the details of his grandfather’s Vietnam and the circumstances of him ending up in prison, she says:
“The elegiac is apolitical … It sucks the air out of the anger and righteousness you need to change things. It makes a useful thing – a memory of injustice – into a pretty bauble.”
Andre himself is often unflinching in his assessment as well. This is how he remembers the conversations with his grandfather in preparation of the book:
“I remember feeling the distance between us, separated by language and years, but also by my own self-consciousness. I remember listening to him and, at the same time, listening to myself listen: whirring of my own thoughts so loud that I could hardly hear him speak, working double-time to create a layer of interpretation- meaning, justification, misrecognition - between myself and him, so that I was always I and he always he, and we never quite came together.”
And on the other occasion, why he felt compelled to write this book:
“There was also I guess the chance to find something out about myself, who I came from and so on. But the truth is that was only ever a secondary motivation. What I really wanted was to be famous- not even that just recognised, appreciated. I wanted to satisfy my ego. I don’t mean it pejoratively, either - perhaps you too are reading this letter to close up the wounds that make your self less whole. Okay so that’s a dodge - making oneself whole and projecting oneself into the lives and minds of others, these are not the same thing.
So the purpose of creating a factually compelling and accurate tribute to his grandfather and his
time appears to be illusive. He uses a term “built on mud”. How useful is any family story or even history writing if it is emotive. An attempt to collect all the facts to make a complete picture proves an impossible task. All such stories end up built on “mus” of individual recollections. But then they are propped by memory “industrial complex”. That Improves the coherence of the community but often by dehumanising the other add “forgetting” inconvenient bits.
Andre tries to resist all these temptations and the ends up being more about himself, his place in the world, the world itself rather than an accurate family history.
However, nevertheless in the process Andre has succeeded in revealing who was his grandfather. Also he has managed to say a lot about guilt and innocence, collective and individual remembrance, its
difference from history; and inevitability of forgetting, its difference from forgiveness.
Recently I’ve read Parade, a new novel by Rachel Cusk. In the novel she is exploring the question of perception: whether it is possible to perceive without projecting one’s individuality on the result. Or even wider: whether it is at all possible not to have an intentionality, the implied point of view while making a statement either to just a human being or to a wider world, be it artistic, political or even simply observational. In Parade, Cusk comments:
“The writer writes about what he already knows and has decided is there. He pretends he doesn’t know, hasn’t decided. He sells this illusion to the reader, who joins him in the labour of fantasy. G’s conception was the opposite of this. He wanted to be innocent of knowledge. He wanted simply to record.”
G here is a writer and a movie director based on Eric Rohmer. Through him, Cusk seems to hope that an expressed statement can be a simply “record”; perception is otherwise might be “innocent of knowledge”.
Andre seems to echo the question although applied in a different context. And he comes to a very different conclusion about the possibility of “innocent or neutral” perception.
Backed by Tran Đuc Thao’s philosophy, he seems to believe that one’s living experiences create a background and define possibilities of perception. In other words, this creates a field from which one’s mind selects elements to make a picture of a thought; it “gives perception a meaning”. So seeing the same “facts” two people with different “living experiences” might struggle to find a common ground.
“What appears to me as inscrutable, unreasonable, beyond the pale, is absolutely natural to the Anamite (an older generation of political emigrant from Vietnam) necessary even….So there is no such thing as innocent or neutral perception- all perception is immediately situated within the horizon that defines one’s existence. It is little wonder, that even though we perceive the same facts, the Anamite and I will draw contradictory conclusions.
I find this idea if not very original then immensely powerful. In the context of the modern world with its deadly conflicts, turbulent politics, relentless speed and unreliable narratives, it might explain why people looking at the same “facts” come to vastly different conclusions on justice; on the past and its glory or the lack of it; on war and the acceptability or avoidance of its civilian casualties; on necessity of human suffering for the sake of sone abstract concepts or indeed very concrete material resources.
Even perception cannot be innocent. That is why Andre cannot avoid feeling guilty living in Australia with his own personal baggage but also with the baggage of the Australian historical past.
So your home: a place where you can be innocent. But that’s just the thing - you and I can never be innocent in Australia: the only thing worse that a tourist or an immigrant is the coloniser, the stranger who insists: I have always been here.
And when he is at Cambridge at some point he thinks: “Maybe there is a power of proclaiming one’s non-innocence. The advantage of being strangers no illusions about our innocence, about true belonging, as we are tempted to believe back there. I can stop denying that I always felt guilty from birth and after guilty for squandering inheritance. “
As mentioned earlier, his grandfather was a Catholic and a civil functionary of the regime in South Vietnam propped by the Americans at some stage. Later under the communists, he spent ten years in prison without charge in atrocious conditions. But even in the situation with his grandfather Andre eventually thinks: “about complicity, how the innocent like my grandfather, rarely have clean hands?”
This honesty is refreshing. It might take some readers out of their comfort zone or it might illicit just another shrug from the others. That would be unfortunate but not unexpected. The book also contains a letter to his baby daughter when he gets older. And though I found this gesture a bit too symbolic, still, I want to end with the one of his messages:
”There is no such thing as having no choice- I don’t believe in that. Not for me, and not for you. For others, perhaps, in the abstract- the poor have no choice, the radicalised have no choice, the chemically imbalanced have no choice. When I am feeling particularly objective-after bracing reading group on Capatal, say - I might even believe that the rich and powerful have no choice, that they are buffeted by the winds of social forces as much as anyone else. But for you and me I claim the privilege of choosing and being judged for our choosing. Is there any more privilege more bourgeois or more precious?”
More comprehensive, contextually rich review from a member of a diaspora is here:
https://dvan.org/2024/02/book-review-...
July 16, 2023
3.5
So I've read a few other reviews now I've finished because I did wonder if I'd missed something vital. But as I read the acknowledgements section is see that Dao has written and re-written this short book for the past 10 years and perhaps that's why I struggled with it.
We have a mix of family history, country history, essay, philosophy, theory, memoir and contemplation all thrown together in no particular order. There seemed to be a fair amount of repetition and I think that's possibly what finally gave me the headache.
Perhaps what I really wanted was a more formal history of Vietnam or the boat people or the Manus asylum seekers - all of which Dao is eminently able to describe. Maybe I just wanted something more linear rather than the bouncing about forwards, backwards and sideways that I got.
People who have a personal connection with Vietnam would probably find this book interesting.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance review copy.
So I've read a few other reviews now I've finished because I did wonder if I'd missed something vital. But as I read the acknowledgements section is see that Dao has written and re-written this short book for the past 10 years and perhaps that's why I struggled with it.
We have a mix of family history, country history, essay, philosophy, theory, memoir and contemplation all thrown together in no particular order. There seemed to be a fair amount of repetition and I think that's possibly what finally gave me the headache.
Perhaps what I really wanted was a more formal history of Vietnam or the boat people or the Manus asylum seekers - all of which Dao is eminently able to describe. Maybe I just wanted something more linear rather than the bouncing about forwards, backwards and sideways that I got.
People who have a personal connection with Vietnam would probably find this book interesting.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance review copy.
April 16, 2023
What a multi-layered complex mining of inheritance, inter-generational trauma, colonialism, and identity for past, present and future generations. Obvious comp titles are The Boat and The Sympathizer but this at times felt closer to essay than fiction akin to the non-fiction work of Alexander Chee and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I wish I could have lingered with this work for weeks but had to read it quickly as I prepare for the panels I’m hosting at @sorrentowritersfestival. I will definitely be reading it again. Haven’t read anything like it in a long time; a demanding, rewarding, thought-provoking work of hybrid fiction.
May 31, 2024
Because of my teaching career I have always had strong interest in the migrant/refugee literary genre. This book doesn’t fit neatly into this genre as I read, I wasn’t sure if it was a family saga, a personal memoir, a novel or a journey of self-discovery. The book takes the reader on a journey, 1930s Hanoi, Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge. All these themes have been braided into nonlinear story from Dao's grandfather through to his young daughter.
Dao is an Australian with Vietnamese heritage. His grandfather was gaoled for a decade by the communists for his western liberal views. The author spent time in Vietnam and the Paris where his grandfather spent the last of his years. The author was writing an account of his grandfather’s life.
Dao has certainly achieved excellence, he has a bachelors, masters and PhD. He has studied at Cambridge and used his legal training to help refugees and migrants.
This is a complex read but, in the end, quite satisfying.
I was travelling in Vietnam, staying in the resort town of Nah Trang. I came out of the water at the same time as these two Viet guys. Interestingly they had pects the size of melons. I thought, “they didn’t get those in any rice paddy.” Sure enough they were students, come gym junkies from Melbourne. I followed them up to a beach side restaurant where there was a group of thirty or more ‘Viet Kieu’. Overseas Vietnamese. The restaurant was spotted with AFL wear and the air was filled with screams and laughter with an Aussie twang.
Dao is an Australian with Vietnamese heritage. His grandfather was gaoled for a decade by the communists for his western liberal views. The author spent time in Vietnam and the Paris where his grandfather spent the last of his years. The author was writing an account of his grandfather’s life.
Dao has certainly achieved excellence, he has a bachelors, masters and PhD. He has studied at Cambridge and used his legal training to help refugees and migrants.
This is a complex read but, in the end, quite satisfying.
I was travelling in Vietnam, staying in the resort town of Nah Trang. I came out of the water at the same time as these two Viet guys. Interestingly they had pects the size of melons. I thought, “they didn’t get those in any rice paddy.” Sure enough they were students, come gym junkies from Melbourne. I followed them up to a beach side restaurant where there was a group of thirty or more ‘Viet Kieu’. Overseas Vietnamese. The restaurant was spotted with AFL wear and the air was filled with screams and laughter with an Aussie twang.
May 24, 2023
Moments of brilliance but unfortunately for me too much academic style writing. The book was trying to be clever by interweaving history, philosophy and personal narration but I found it all too much. This guy is a gifted writer - his prose when telling the story of him and his family in current times was wonderful and heartfelt. The sections of the book retelling his grandfathers story were also excellent. Unfortunately there was a lot of parts in between that just didn’t work for me though I would imagine academics would probably totally disagree with me. I would certainly read his next book hoping for more of the traditional fiction style.
November 22, 2025
Like the author, I too grew up with fragmented snippets of insight into the country our family left behind, when my parents with their young children fled Vietnam on a precariously small fishing ship, battling the ferocious sea and pirates as they sought freedom and a new future for us. My father was imprisoned for 3 traumatic years in a Viet Cong labour camp following the war. There remains in him a strong antagonism towards the communist regime that continues to control Vietnam and that prevents him, even now as an old man, from returning to his motherland once more. It is enlightening to read Dao's book, to see him struggle with the same feelings of respecting his grandfather's memories and experiences of the country he left behind, while still allowing himself to appreciate the positive changes this half century has brought about in Vietnam.
Listening to the book was a time disorientating as Dao jumped back and forth in time between different POVs. There was more philosophical meditation that I would have liked, but perhaps, I would appreciate these passages more in the written form, when I can let the words resonate in my head for longer to ponder over, rather than hear the line in passing.
Listening to the book was a time disorientating as Dao jumped back and forth in time between different POVs. There was more philosophical meditation that I would have liked, but perhaps, I would appreciate these passages more in the written form, when I can let the words resonate in my head for longer to ponder over, rather than hear the line in passing.
January 28, 2024
Anam felt like a way for Andre Dao to explore his identity, where he belongs, and what parts of his identity and the values he inherited he should carry forward and pass on to his daughter.
I picked this book up as a way of learning more about a country I am about to visit. What it showed me was a snapshot of the complex and nuanced history of the socio-political evolution of Vietnam in the past half a century. It showed me many viewpoints of a nation of people who took different sides in their struggle for freedom. How these choices were sometimes based on an intense and immovable belief in their political ideologies, but sometimes simply based on survival. The resilience of a people to hold onto their land, their freedom is palpable through the author’s fictionalised yet close to real life story about his grandfather. While piecing together his grandfather’s story, following his death, the author uncovers the depth of his struggles, filled in the gap with historical context, and how it impacted the rest of the family.
Along the way, every bit of his grandfather’s story makes him question his own life. His relationship with his wife, his daughter, his responsibilities within his family, to his community - he questions it all. One of the most interesting parts of the book was him going back to Vietnam in present day, discovering through his aunts, uncles and cousins still living there how different contemporary Vietnam is. How far from a romanticised version of it this living, breathing country is. How diaspora can sometimes preserve a singular idea of what a country once was in their minds, as the country grows without them, beyond them.
Going to Vietnam with a very different understanding of its history, but even more eager to see even a glimpse of what it’s like today.
I picked this book up as a way of learning more about a country I am about to visit. What it showed me was a snapshot of the complex and nuanced history of the socio-political evolution of Vietnam in the past half a century. It showed me many viewpoints of a nation of people who took different sides in their struggle for freedom. How these choices were sometimes based on an intense and immovable belief in their political ideologies, but sometimes simply based on survival. The resilience of a people to hold onto their land, their freedom is palpable through the author’s fictionalised yet close to real life story about his grandfather. While piecing together his grandfather’s story, following his death, the author uncovers the depth of his struggles, filled in the gap with historical context, and how it impacted the rest of the family.
Along the way, every bit of his grandfather’s story makes him question his own life. His relationship with his wife, his daughter, his responsibilities within his family, to his community - he questions it all. One of the most interesting parts of the book was him going back to Vietnam in present day, discovering through his aunts, uncles and cousins still living there how different contemporary Vietnam is. How far from a romanticised version of it this living, breathing country is. How diaspora can sometimes preserve a singular idea of what a country once was in their minds, as the country grows without them, beyond them.
Going to Vietnam with a very different understanding of its history, but even more eager to see even a glimpse of what it’s like today.
June 4, 2024
3.5 stars. A serious, unique novel that reads like a memoir and short essays on the feelings of not belonging to any one country. The narrator’s grandfather was imprisoned for ten years after the Communists gained political control of North Vietnam in the 1950s. The grandfather had been a lawyer, Catholic and stayed in North Vietnam thinking he could have an influence in the country’s future.
The narrator, who has lived in a number of countries, studying, working as a lawyer, being a husband, reflects on his past and what influence his upbringing has had on his life to date.
The book has some repetition of scenes and ideas, and little plot momentum. The reader gains some idea about the narrator, his grandfather, and to a lesser extent, his wife. The book is more about the effects on families of being forced to leave your country of origin, and the narrator trying to understand himself and what he wants to do with his life.
A thought provoking read.
This book is longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin award.
The narrator, who has lived in a number of countries, studying, working as a lawyer, being a husband, reflects on his past and what influence his upbringing has had on his life to date.
The book has some repetition of scenes and ideas, and little plot momentum. The reader gains some idea about the narrator, his grandfather, and to a lesser extent, his wife. The book is more about the effects on families of being forced to leave your country of origin, and the narrator trying to understand himself and what he wants to do with his life.
A thought provoking read.
This book is longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin award.
May 25, 2024
THIS WAS SO BRILLIANT and profound and compelling, an absolute privilege to read
May 12, 2023
A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story or a detective tale?
Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten by archives and by families. As the grandson sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about: a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them as well? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting.
Andre Dao is formidable! He has a Bachelor, Masters and PhD in law, does incredible creative and human rights work, and can pen a "novel" - is it a novel - like this...I spent most of the time I was reading the book in absolute awe (and texting various academics to ask if he really is this amazing, and the answer was a resounding YES!).
Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten by archives and by families. As the grandson sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about: a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them as well? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting.
Andre Dao is formidable! He has a Bachelor, Masters and PhD in law, does incredible creative and human rights work, and can pen a "novel" - is it a novel - like this...I spent most of the time I was reading the book in absolute awe (and texting various academics to ask if he really is this amazing, and the answer was a resounding YES!).
September 4, 2024
This is a truly extraordinary novel, unlike anything I have ever read before. So many themes are intelligently woven into a complex narration of intergenerational remembering/forgetting, family, migration, war, complicity and identity.
The whole narration seems to move in circles (or a form of spiral?), returning to the same places and people over and over again, each time capturing another previously hidden aspect of their history. As such, the story is constructed through an array of vignettes from the past and the present, moving between Vietnam, France, Australia and England. Throughout, the political, philosophical and personal complexities of memory/remembering/forgetting constitute the overarching (albeit elusive) theme.
André Dao's distinctive voice, combined with meticulous research and an exquisite writing style, makes this a special and profoundly moving reading experience. I can't wait to read more by this author!
The whole narration seems to move in circles (or a form of spiral?), returning to the same places and people over and over again, each time capturing another previously hidden aspect of their history. As such, the story is constructed through an array of vignettes from the past and the present, moving between Vietnam, France, Australia and England. Throughout, the political, philosophical and personal complexities of memory/remembering/forgetting constitute the overarching (albeit elusive) theme.
André Dao's distinctive voice, combined with meticulous research and an exquisite writing style, makes this a special and profoundly moving reading experience. I can't wait to read more by this author!
July 26, 2023
Anam is a difficult book to review for two reasons, one being that I don't think I have the skill as a reviewer to be able to do it justice, and two being that there's so much depth so many layers to this book I'm not sure after only reading it once I've had enough time to appreciate all of its message. There's no doubt about it André Dao is a skilled writer and an incredible academic, but for me I feel like this is a book I would need to read more than once to be able to understand it fully. It's definitely a book that challenged me.
It's times this that I wish I annotated books because Anam would be perfect for that. The writing is beautiful, and although I struggled with the first 50 pages once I read further, I was absolutely entranced. A blend of fiction and essay, a human rights lawyer tells the story of his grandfather, a refugee imprisoned in Sài Gón's famous Chí Hòa prison. Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, it's a tale of his identity between his upbringing and his Vietnamese heritage. Now, a father, it's his love for his daughter that makes him want to explore his families history further.
At times, a heartbreaking read, Andrè doesn't shy away from the brutality of what his grandfather experienced but it was the grandmother that really captured my heart, you could sense her love and longing for her husband and wondering if he was ever going to return. What would her life look like? Would she ever get the same man back?
I do wish there was a little more fluidity in Anam, as it can sometimes feel a little disjointed, but overall, it didn't ruin my enjoyment. The fact that this is a debut is quite remarkable, and it really is one that I would reread. A story of displacement and colonialism of belonging and family I would recommend this book to anyone who has a real interest in history, especially surrounding Vietnam as it does delve into the history of the country in a lot of detail.
It's times this that I wish I annotated books because Anam would be perfect for that. The writing is beautiful, and although I struggled with the first 50 pages once I read further, I was absolutely entranced. A blend of fiction and essay, a human rights lawyer tells the story of his grandfather, a refugee imprisoned in Sài Gón's famous Chí Hòa prison. Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, it's a tale of his identity between his upbringing and his Vietnamese heritage. Now, a father, it's his love for his daughter that makes him want to explore his families history further.
At times, a heartbreaking read, Andrè doesn't shy away from the brutality of what his grandfather experienced but it was the grandmother that really captured my heart, you could sense her love and longing for her husband and wondering if he was ever going to return. What would her life look like? Would she ever get the same man back?
I do wish there was a little more fluidity in Anam, as it can sometimes feel a little disjointed, but overall, it didn't ruin my enjoyment. The fact that this is a debut is quite remarkable, and it really is one that I would reread. A story of displacement and colonialism of belonging and family I would recommend this book to anyone who has a real interest in history, especially surrounding Vietnam as it does delve into the history of the country in a lot of detail.
September 1, 2023
A novel of ideas grounded (khm) in Derrida's philosophy, which has become an unavoidable reference for anyone dealing with questions of historical violence and its aftermath such as contested memory, recovery and justice. Reliance on Derrida is also the novel's weakness, especially as the author/narrator seems to have decided to delimit deconstructive reach to only certain assumptions serving as frameworks for the narrative. Namely, "it is the panic of squandering an inheritance, of foreclosing the future", writes Dao at the beginning of Chapter 19. The specter of his grandfather and historical trauma haunts the narrator: "I waited in vain for the specter to appear on the battlements, to tell me what to do - to tell me how to avenge him, how to redeem the past. I wait for him to deliver me a letter marked. For my heir."
The question of memory is thus firmly cast as an issue of inheritance and as such it is bound to cisheteronormative reproductive horizon. Any possibility of memory beyond the one transferred between the points along the reproductive (straight) line is rendered impossible. And that despite extensively quoting from Trần Đức Thảo's Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, where Thảo argues that there's no pure subject as Husserl would have it, but that any such subject is always already mediated by class and race (and, I would add, consequently gender and sexuality).
I'm giving the novel three stars because at least it made me argue with it while I was reading it. I'd have given it one star on philosophical grounds alone, as the novel's not really thinking at all.
The question of memory is thus firmly cast as an issue of inheritance and as such it is bound to cisheteronormative reproductive horizon. Any possibility of memory beyond the one transferred between the points along the reproductive (straight) line is rendered impossible. And that despite extensively quoting from Trần Đức Thảo's Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, where Thảo argues that there's no pure subject as Husserl would have it, but that any such subject is always already mediated by class and race (and, I would add, consequently gender and sexuality).
I'm giving the novel three stars because at least it made me argue with it while I was reading it. I'd have given it one star on philosophical grounds alone, as the novel's not really thinking at all.
November 22, 2023
I tried really hard to get into this book but it didn't grip me as I would have thought considering the subject matter. The part essay/part biographical structure was a lot to take in as it read more stream of consciousness at times. I would finish chapters (most of them are 2-3 pages), and forgot what had taken place. I guess it was aiming to be short 'scenes' that altogether would tell a bigger story. Maybe I'll give it another go later in life..
October 7, 2023
I really wanted to like this but I found it hard to stay engaged in the story.
January 21, 2025
This book is truly marvellous. It's so deeply smart: offering a measured consideration of ideas about memory, home, family, purpose, redemption, identity, forgiveness and so much more, in a myriad of ways, and uniquely so at that. It also felt like a shape shifter, some parts fiction, non-fiction, conversation, interview, personal and political. Andre Dao writes beautifully and meditatively, but then interweaves such an array of history, place, time, connection into it that it becomes way more than just the sum of it parts. His exploration of the impact of settler/colonizer/d/diasporic living is really such a gift and I don't have words to do it justice - but just know that there is so much to be gained from diving into this one. It's not the "easiest" read because it's so intelligent and slips in and out of things, but it needs to be read! He also explores intergenerational trauma. And whilst this is on some levels a story of narrator and his grandfather, I think the true badass heroes of the book are the grandmother and the partner, which is testament to the strength based approach Dao understands of women, but also testament to the amazing women in his life.
May 5, 2024
3.75/5
December 2, 2023
This isn't a light read or a book to escape to. This is a deeply personal reckoning on memory, identity, belonging, home and history, and you'll need to be in a space to reflect and grapple with the author's decades-long headstart to these themes. At times the structure and content can be extremely difficult to follow, but it is also what makes this book so powerful. One read won't do this book justice.
October 19, 2024
An immense pleasure.
Elegant writing , beautiful storytelling. Many different threads cleverly interwoven.
Elegant writing , beautiful storytelling. Many different threads cleverly interwoven.
Read
May 30, 2023It's nice when a novel clues you in early, says "Hey bud, listen up", tells you it's operating on another level and you'd better be ready because if you're not, well, too late. It's happened to me before and it will probably happen again, but for now I value the most recent instance – Anam, the debut novel of Melbourne-based author André Dao.
Anam's first page is a lovely, sinuous series of sentences offered between parentheses. It's about marriage, war, time and separation. It's about the ways in which Anam melds memoir, essay and fiction. It's glorious, and so is everything that follows.
Raised in Melbourne, Anam's unnamed narrator – a lawyer – lives with his partner Lauren and their young daughter, Edith, while studying at Cambridge. He is compelled by a need to write his family's story: a tale of parents who fled Vietnam for Australia, a grandmother who left Vietnam for France, and a grandfather – Catholic, a lawyer and an intellectual – who was detained without charge or trial for 10 years inside Chí Hòa prison in Ho Chi Minh City.
Dao asks: how can we represent what we are unable to imagine? And is it a question of imagination, or of receptivity, availability? Is it a question of metonymy – the ability of one thing to stand in for another, to speak on behalf of?
He coaxes his narrative into the shape it needs, the shape it wants to assume – which may not be the shape an author wants – in order to tell what is, in essence, a compromised narrative, a blend of fact and fiction. The novel's accommodations make space for lost descendants, lost family members, lost time. In this respect, Dao shows us how compromise can be the mother of invention. Because that is what Anam is all about: the compromises we make in order to live.
Read on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-2...
And also here:
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2...
Anam's first page is a lovely, sinuous series of sentences offered between parentheses. It's about marriage, war, time and separation. It's about the ways in which Anam melds memoir, essay and fiction. It's glorious, and so is everything that follows.
Raised in Melbourne, Anam's unnamed narrator – a lawyer – lives with his partner Lauren and their young daughter, Edith, while studying at Cambridge. He is compelled by a need to write his family's story: a tale of parents who fled Vietnam for Australia, a grandmother who left Vietnam for France, and a grandfather – Catholic, a lawyer and an intellectual – who was detained without charge or trial for 10 years inside Chí Hòa prison in Ho Chi Minh City.
Dao asks: how can we represent what we are unable to imagine? And is it a question of imagination, or of receptivity, availability? Is it a question of metonymy – the ability of one thing to stand in for another, to speak on behalf of?
He coaxes his narrative into the shape it needs, the shape it wants to assume – which may not be the shape an author wants – in order to tell what is, in essence, a compromised narrative, a blend of fact and fiction. The novel's accommodations make space for lost descendants, lost family members, lost time. In this respect, Dao shows us how compromise can be the mother of invention. Because that is what Anam is all about: the compromises we make in order to live.
Read on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-2...
And also here:
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2...
September 1, 2023
This is a very challenging and academic read - there's some interesting stories in here and I think for some people this would be a five star book
January 27, 2024
"...if the loss of connection, of country, constituted my consciousness – I could hardly know that, could I? There is no position outside such a loss from which I can view myself. Perhaps you could say instead that the place I have been imagining is constituted by that loss, and that is why my imagined place is so different to my grandfather’s, or my grandmother’s: we are reading from different founding documents. Which would be why my Anam – for that is what it is, isn’t it? – was unrecognisable, until now, as a version of Anam at all."
Throughout this novel, our unnamed protagonist is struggling to write a novel about his grandfather, a former political prisoner in Vietnam. What is expected of him is understood - a clean story of suffering and survival, in which grandfather and grandson are tied together by trauma, culture and migration. But our protagonist is unable to write this book, he is lost in a maelstrom of uncertainty, plagued by philosophical wanderings, distracted by questions of imagination, creation and remembrance. and so instead of this neatly packaged story we know how to process, we get Anam - a long, often beautiful, sometimes baffling, meander on What it All Means, which explores more than concludes.
I realised partway through I was strangely irritated that this has been packaged as a novel and not creative non-fiction. Not because I assume it is all true - many things are clearly fictionalised. Rather I think it was because Anam doesn't provide - or didn't for me - the distance you expect from a novel between reader and author. You are uncomfortably in dialogue with Dao through this book, shedding to a cobweb the pretence that this is all about an imagined state. But discomfort is not always a bad thing, and one of Dao's abiding fascinations is how important imagined states are to us. The Anam of the title is an imagined state, a homeland that inspires sacrifice and aggression but never exists in a realised state. Similarly, our protagonist knows he is supposed - in both his human rights law pursuits and his writing - to focus on practical, concrete studies, but is instead fascinated by how our past shapes our imaginings, and by how ellipses - forgettings accidental and not so much, the lapses in communication over generations - shapes our sense of the past. Catholicism, with its ritualised remembrances and fascination with veiled meaning, threads it way through the novel, joining Derrida, Arente and Vietnamese philosopher Tran Đức Thảo.
As our protagonist wanders around Cambridge thinking, he receives voice mails from a former client in Manus. With little left to say, this young man simply records the sounds of his everyday life in one of the loveliest parts of the novel, exquisitely illustrating the ineffable nature of the connection. It is also grounds our protagonist as a character who may think too much, but for whom doing is the way to find meaning.
"Mostly, I tried to say, I did the human rights work because I could not imagine doing anything else – because when I tried to do other things they felt hollow and unimportant, unreal – and that helping a client, even if I was not really helping, even if I was just patiently explaining that no help was possible, that all there was to do was to wait without expectation for change – even then, that felt real, that felt solid – or at least, more real than anything else. And that’s what those fragments meant for me too, I tried to say, they gave me something to hold on to. Tiny handholds on an otherwise sheer cliff face. Which is why I carried those fragments around with me, even when I was no longer working on them."
It is these moments that stop this being lost in its own sense of direction paralysis. Dao explores nooks and crannies, but he has something to show us about each. Dialogues are often sharp and challenging (there is a particularly powerful exchange around christening, faith and choice, for example, and a laugh out loud moment when a besieged professor comments on a proposed thesis on a Vietnamese postcolonial philosopher's views on imagination and history with "I'm just not sure what relevance this has to International law" before depressingly siezing on a reference to Fanon to suggest ths as a refocus "he's quite well known". The other rich anchor in Anam are the portraits of love - including the bond between our protogonist and his lonely wife, who is largely trapped in a flat with a baby in a town she knows no-one in, while he is supposed to be furthering his career. It is the depth of her longing for home that first triggers him to realise the absence of a sense of home for him, the core of his drift, and it is her very pratical and clearly expressed needs that ground him in turn.
But the heart of this novel (still don't think it is really a novel) is the love between grandparents and grandson. There is a lot of ideas in this book, but whether they come or go, are right or wrong, the deep love between this family stays. Whatever is lost or irreconcilable, this love remains. And that, in the end, is something to stand on.
Throughout this novel, our unnamed protagonist is struggling to write a novel about his grandfather, a former political prisoner in Vietnam. What is expected of him is understood - a clean story of suffering and survival, in which grandfather and grandson are tied together by trauma, culture and migration. But our protagonist is unable to write this book, he is lost in a maelstrom of uncertainty, plagued by philosophical wanderings, distracted by questions of imagination, creation and remembrance. and so instead of this neatly packaged story we know how to process, we get Anam - a long, often beautiful, sometimes baffling, meander on What it All Means, which explores more than concludes.
I realised partway through I was strangely irritated that this has been packaged as a novel and not creative non-fiction. Not because I assume it is all true - many things are clearly fictionalised. Rather I think it was because Anam doesn't provide - or didn't for me - the distance you expect from a novel between reader and author. You are uncomfortably in dialogue with Dao through this book, shedding to a cobweb the pretence that this is all about an imagined state. But discomfort is not always a bad thing, and one of Dao's abiding fascinations is how important imagined states are to us. The Anam of the title is an imagined state, a homeland that inspires sacrifice and aggression but never exists in a realised state. Similarly, our protagonist knows he is supposed - in both his human rights law pursuits and his writing - to focus on practical, concrete studies, but is instead fascinated by how our past shapes our imaginings, and by how ellipses - forgettings accidental and not so much, the lapses in communication over generations - shapes our sense of the past. Catholicism, with its ritualised remembrances and fascination with veiled meaning, threads it way through the novel, joining Derrida, Arente and Vietnamese philosopher Tran Đức Thảo.
As our protagonist wanders around Cambridge thinking, he receives voice mails from a former client in Manus. With little left to say, this young man simply records the sounds of his everyday life in one of the loveliest parts of the novel, exquisitely illustrating the ineffable nature of the connection. It is also grounds our protagonist as a character who may think too much, but for whom doing is the way to find meaning.
"Mostly, I tried to say, I did the human rights work because I could not imagine doing anything else – because when I tried to do other things they felt hollow and unimportant, unreal – and that helping a client, even if I was not really helping, even if I was just patiently explaining that no help was possible, that all there was to do was to wait without expectation for change – even then, that felt real, that felt solid – or at least, more real than anything else. And that’s what those fragments meant for me too, I tried to say, they gave me something to hold on to. Tiny handholds on an otherwise sheer cliff face. Which is why I carried those fragments around with me, even when I was no longer working on them."
It is these moments that stop this being lost in its own sense of direction paralysis. Dao explores nooks and crannies, but he has something to show us about each. Dialogues are often sharp and challenging (there is a particularly powerful exchange around christening, faith and choice, for example, and a laugh out loud moment when a besieged professor comments on a proposed thesis on a Vietnamese postcolonial philosopher's views on imagination and history with "I'm just not sure what relevance this has to International law" before depressingly siezing on a reference to Fanon to suggest ths as a refocus "he's quite well known". The other rich anchor in Anam are the portraits of love - including the bond between our protogonist and his lonely wife, who is largely trapped in a flat with a baby in a town she knows no-one in, while he is supposed to be furthering his career. It is the depth of her longing for home that first triggers him to realise the absence of a sense of home for him, the core of his drift, and it is her very pratical and clearly expressed needs that ground him in turn.
But the heart of this novel (still don't think it is really a novel) is the love between grandparents and grandson. There is a lot of ideas in this book, but whether they come or go, are right or wrong, the deep love between this family stays. Whatever is lost or irreconcilable, this love remains. And that, in the end, is something to stand on.
abandoned
April 21, 2025Just not in the mood for this at this time.
I don't rate books I don't finish.
I don't rate books I don't finish.
July 25, 2023
To say this was not what I was expecting would be an understatement, for a start Andre Dao's writings, a blend of essay, history, theory, remembrance, research, philosophy, family, colonialism and nation, reads primarily like non-fiction. It is of an unknown Melbourne lawyer and academic, writing a thesis, driven to become a human rights lawyer, with his own family, Lauren, who offers her own thoughts, and a daughter, Edith. This 'novel' is multilayered, intellectually demanding, complex, thought provoking, where the search for a soul, identity, the past, memories, a grandfather, Anam (Vietnam) and Anamites, only to find it a more troubling process than he expected.
The more he reaches to grasp the facts and truth, who his grandfather and Anam is, the more of a quagmire it all becomes, the further it all slips away from him, he is doomed to failure. He had grown up listening to his grandfather stories, a man who had been imprisoned without trial for 10 years by the communist government at the notorious Chi Hoa prison, going on to die in a Paris suburb. He sifts through archives, photographs, historical documents, his personal recordings, the prison, the different perspectives and the thinking that has shaped his life, looking at theories, phenomenology, and the likes of Socrates, Jacques Derrida, and more. He finds himself hampered by his inability to forgive as his grandfather, and just how much has he misremembered, did he really know his grandfather, who exactly is he, and what exactly can he pass on to his daughter?
Inevitably Dao will have us thinking about ourselves, examining what we base our sense of identity on, the people, immigration, countries, cultures, the imagination, fantasies, and the self deceptions, and the memories. The grandfather's stories here are part of a bigger history, a history of all these places, and none of them, Anam and Anamites. There is suffering, loss, exile, forgiveness and redemption, life and people are overflowing with complexities, just how well is it possible to know families and others, there are the complications of being part of more than one country and culture, and the impact of colonialism. What do we remember and what do we forget? This may possibly not be a read for everyone, but it is an incredible, challenging and remarkable read that I have no hesitation in recommending highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
The more he reaches to grasp the facts and truth, who his grandfather and Anam is, the more of a quagmire it all becomes, the further it all slips away from him, he is doomed to failure. He had grown up listening to his grandfather stories, a man who had been imprisoned without trial for 10 years by the communist government at the notorious Chi Hoa prison, going on to die in a Paris suburb. He sifts through archives, photographs, historical documents, his personal recordings, the prison, the different perspectives and the thinking that has shaped his life, looking at theories, phenomenology, and the likes of Socrates, Jacques Derrida, and more. He finds himself hampered by his inability to forgive as his grandfather, and just how much has he misremembered, did he really know his grandfather, who exactly is he, and what exactly can he pass on to his daughter?
Inevitably Dao will have us thinking about ourselves, examining what we base our sense of identity on, the people, immigration, countries, cultures, the imagination, fantasies, and the self deceptions, and the memories. The grandfather's stories here are part of a bigger history, a history of all these places, and none of them, Anam and Anamites. There is suffering, loss, exile, forgiveness and redemption, life and people are overflowing with complexities, just how well is it possible to know families and others, there are the complications of being part of more than one country and culture, and the impact of colonialism. What do we remember and what do we forget? This may possibly not be a read for everyone, but it is an incredible, challenging and remarkable read that I have no hesitation in recommending highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
October 20, 2024
I bought this book at the OzAsia Festival 2023 in Adelaide and picked it up for 4 reasons; (1) I met the author; (2) I saw that it had won a literary prize; (3) I felt it was surely going to be difficult to find in a Malaysian bookstore; and (4) would love to read a family history narrative touching on migration, identity & belonging.
A year later I finally got round to reading it and my review is that the prose is stylish and the observations sharp. The book is separated into 3 sections; Michaelmas, Lent and Easter, and is structured this way as the author tells the story throughout his one year of postgraduate studies in Cambridge. The narrative goes back and forth in time and place, and non-fiction is also mixed with fiction ie. imaginings of what happened in the past.
The crux of the story is about his grandfather's 10-year imprisonment at Chi Hoa Prison as a political prisoner. A basic understanding of Vietnamese history is assumed, and there are plenty of French and Vietnamese terms & phrases peppered throughout the 340-page book. It's also interspersed with a lot of political philosophy, theory and musings, so for the less brainy & literati, this book may be a challenge.
For me, I enjoyed the retelling of personal history that is inextricably intertwined with Vietnam's history. There are the usual themes on the ugliness and brutality of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and most sadly of all, the famine, civil war and nationalism it took to form the modern nation-state.
However, the theme of faith stands out most strongly for me, as the protagonists hold onto their Catholic faith to endure the hardships of life, and fittingly, the book ends with forgiveness and reconciliation (on the grandfather's part) and returning "home" to Melbourne (on the author's part). The book ends happily and with hope after all the trauma of dislocation passed down the generations.
A beautiful book indeed and I'll end the review with some memorable lines that I marked down with a pencil as I was reading:
"The only thing worse than a tourist or an immigrant is the coloniser, the stranger who insists: I have always been here." - p.107
"We can't redeem the past for those who lived through it." - p.178
"...sometimes the body survives but the mind - and the soul - does not." - p.268
"Nostalgia is the longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed." -p.293
A year later I finally got round to reading it and my review is that the prose is stylish and the observations sharp. The book is separated into 3 sections; Michaelmas, Lent and Easter, and is structured this way as the author tells the story throughout his one year of postgraduate studies in Cambridge. The narrative goes back and forth in time and place, and non-fiction is also mixed with fiction ie. imaginings of what happened in the past.
The crux of the story is about his grandfather's 10-year imprisonment at Chi Hoa Prison as a political prisoner. A basic understanding of Vietnamese history is assumed, and there are plenty of French and Vietnamese terms & phrases peppered throughout the 340-page book. It's also interspersed with a lot of political philosophy, theory and musings, so for the less brainy & literati, this book may be a challenge.
For me, I enjoyed the retelling of personal history that is inextricably intertwined with Vietnam's history. There are the usual themes on the ugliness and brutality of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and most sadly of all, the famine, civil war and nationalism it took to form the modern nation-state.
However, the theme of faith stands out most strongly for me, as the protagonists hold onto their Catholic faith to endure the hardships of life, and fittingly, the book ends with forgiveness and reconciliation (on the grandfather's part) and returning "home" to Melbourne (on the author's part). The book ends happily and with hope after all the trauma of dislocation passed down the generations.
A beautiful book indeed and I'll end the review with some memorable lines that I marked down with a pencil as I was reading:
"The only thing worse than a tourist or an immigrant is the coloniser, the stranger who insists: I have always been here." - p.107
"We can't redeem the past for those who lived through it." - p.178
"...sometimes the body survives but the mind - and the soul - does not." - p.268
"Nostalgia is the longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed." -p.293
June 3, 2023
“What research has established can be modified by remembrance. Remembrance can make the incomplete (happiness) complete, and the complete (pain) incomplete.” Memories of his deceased grandfather, imprisoned for ten years by the revolutionary government of Vietnam (Anam), obsess the “eldest son of the eldest son” as he prepares to collect the stories of his grandfather for an upcoming book. But, as the reader learns with the grandson, memories reflect the perspectives and “lived experiences” of those who hold them as “we are always trying to fasten ourselves to a fixed point in the immemorial past, to anchor our sense of self on something solid…” And, as Dao so brilliantly explores, we are “doomed to failure”. His discussions on “phenomonolgy” raised issues I had not considered before in such an academic context.
Rarely have I read such a complex, intellectual narrative. From an early point of the text, I had to continue to remind myself that this was fiction. Dao’s writing style is fluid and, in some parts, breath-taking in its power and creativity. His thoughts on “coming home” (Vietnam/Anam), for him and for his grandfather in the past, stimulated my own reflections on having left America 45 years ago. Tied to our notions of “home”, of what existed for us there, involves both remembering and forgetting. The grandson also considers his grandmother’s life – before her marriage to his grandfather, during her husband’s imprisonment (as a traitor or hero, depending on one’s perspective), and her later life in her apartment in Boissy, France.
I welcomed the focus on Vietnam (Anam) and its people (Anamites), presented with historical and sentimental references as the grandson contemplated his own place within his ancestral home. This was not an easy novel to read. However, the beauty of Dao’s writing and his intriguing discussions on memory, identity, colonialism, and exile are magnetic and worth rereading.
Rarely have I read such a complex, intellectual narrative. From an early point of the text, I had to continue to remind myself that this was fiction. Dao’s writing style is fluid and, in some parts, breath-taking in its power and creativity. His thoughts on “coming home” (Vietnam/Anam), for him and for his grandfather in the past, stimulated my own reflections on having left America 45 years ago. Tied to our notions of “home”, of what existed for us there, involves both remembering and forgetting. The grandson also considers his grandmother’s life – before her marriage to his grandfather, during her husband’s imprisonment (as a traitor or hero, depending on one’s perspective), and her later life in her apartment in Boissy, France.
I welcomed the focus on Vietnam (Anam) and its people (Anamites), presented with historical and sentimental references as the grandson contemplated his own place within his ancestral home. This was not an easy novel to read. However, the beauty of Dao’s writing and his intriguing discussions on memory, identity, colonialism, and exile are magnetic and worth rereading.
October 8, 2024
As the son of refugees and the grandson of a political prisoner, the narrator feels that the world owes something to his grandfather. A simple, mournful remembrance is insufficient; he wants to keep the memory of Annam alive by writing a memoir. His grandfather was a lawyer in Vietnam, also known as Anam. After the U.S. was defeated, the communist government took over. He had been imprisoned at Chi Hoa Prison for 10 years without being charged or tried as a revolutionary.
However, after returning from a fact-finding mission in Vietnam, he realizes that he may have become carried away in his quest. He is determined that the suffering of his grandfather at the hands of a repressive regime cannot be forgotten. At the same time, he feels he does not belong everywhere, matter-of-factly.
The narrator's memory of his grandparents, a research trip, fragments of his extended family in Vietnam, extensive reading, internet searches, and the support of his beloved wife and daughter have inspired him to envision a better version of himself. His grandfather believes that forgiveness is necessary for our own good.
Stories of POWs always make me sad. Their PTSD is hard to endure, and finding healing and closure may haunt them for the rest of their lives. Feeling sympathy and guilt may not be enough. This is the debut novel of the author, and it won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.
August 15, 2023
Reading this I felt comfortable in the intersection of Australia, France and Vietnam, with a sprinkling of philosophy and examination of memory. The time jumps and the repeated speculation about thoughts and alternative events were confusing. There were so many perspectives and themes examined I felt somewhat overwhelmed. This may have been exaggerated by having just read 'Atonement', seen the film 'Oppenheimer', attended a [Roman Catholic] funeral of a person present in my life particularly during my adolescence.
I was reminded of the beautiful novella 'La petite fille de Monsieur Linh', by Philippe Claudel.
Is there a genre termed 'immigrant literature'? Thinking particularly of Shankari Chandran's recent Miles Franklin Award win for her novel 'Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens'.
I was reminded of the beautiful novella 'La petite fille de Monsieur Linh', by Philippe Claudel.
Is there a genre termed 'immigrant literature'? Thinking particularly of Shankari Chandran's recent Miles Franklin Award win for her novel 'Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens'.
September 9, 2023
I really enjoyed Anam. A mix of philosophy, memoir, fiction and non fiction, all swept along by the narrator's voice. This is a unique entry in the genre of family memoir, and I like Andre Dao's approach to the telling of such stories, and the problems they present.
This would have been 5 stars if it weren't for the last part of the book; here in the final chapters, the careful balance Dao has created comes undone somewhat. You get a sense that the narrator and author are rushing towards the end by this point, ready for it to be done. The chapters of this part do not carry the same weight as the ones before them, and the conclusions drawn are not so convincing. Still, Anam is a wonderful read.
This would have been 5 stars if it weren't for the last part of the book; here in the final chapters, the careful balance Dao has created comes undone somewhat. You get a sense that the narrator and author are rushing towards the end by this point, ready for it to be done. The chapters of this part do not carry the same weight as the ones before them, and the conclusions drawn are not so convincing. Still, Anam is a wonderful read.
December 22, 2023
Not a smooth read, where it felt tiresome at times being on Dao's nagging quest on his family's past. His recollections jump across time and locations from Cambridge, Melbourne, Hanoi and Paris, which can be quite disorientating. In a way, it seems reflective of his journey as he struggles to piece the past together. I find it exceptionally difficult to write about the ghost of suffering, especially when it's not yours - something which he balanced beautifully. While he struggled with piecing fragmented memories and recollections, I appreciated the takeaway, where the stories we tell are sometimes more valuable than the facts documented; one where memories of happiness and pain can be replete with fond remembrance instead.
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