In his first time knocking on the door of the short story genre, Khai Don did not choose to take a safe step. "The puppet singing in the distant forest" is a bold and quiet collection of stories, where the author ventures into a realm that is both vague and overwhelming - people, nature and souls drifting together like formless mist.
Not just an ordinary collection of short stories, "The Puppet Sings in the Distant Forest" is like a storytelling ritual. The stories in the book do not follow a linear narrative but are like fragments falling from the mind - sometimes dreamy, sometimes fierce, sometimes desolate like an abandoned dream. Some stories are pictures of a dry and cold urban area; some are the wild echoes of nature being destroyed; and some are painful slices of the soul before the silent cracks.
The 14 short stories in the book are 14 “dream doors”, where reality is bent by the intense imagination and the cold beauty of the natural world . What Khai Don writes is not only about people, but also evokes the forgotten parts of them – the hidden darkness, the wild desire, the broken souls that have not been named. Sometimes it is an ancient spirit in human form, sometimes it is a voice echoing from the past so far away that it is unclear whether it is a human voice or the sound of wind through the forest.
Talking about the work, Professor Chung Hoang Chuong shared: “Through unusual stories, Khai Don draws readers into situations that use imagination to visualize nature, where humans and the environment blend together. The everyday stories, social frameworks with details that have never been developed before will be a very unique journey."
With a powerful, uncompromising pen, always on the verge of breaking, always threatening the reader with a sense of disorientation, Khai Don has created a fascinating story space. There are no main characters, no typical plot lines. There are only drifting creatures; no knots, only confusion that deepens. Each story is a dance of "puppets" that no one controls, and their singing echoes like a call from the deepest place of loneliness.
"The puppet singing in the distant forest" does not try to answer the question "who are we?" but suggests a series of thoughts: what is human identity, what has it been, and where have the wildest parts of us fallen into the midst of a life that is too crowded?
A bold, powerful and distinctive work, marking a new and challenging step for Khai Don on the map of contemporary Vietnamese literature.
Khai Don (real name: Pham Lan Phuong) is a journalist and writer, writing in both Vietnamese and English. She is the author of many outstanding books in the genres of memoirs, essays, travelogues, and recently short stories.
Khai Don won the Virginia de Araujo Prize for poetry awarded by The Academy of American Poets in 2021 and 2022. Her works often explore personal psychological depth, loneliness, identity, memory, and the sense of migration.
Published books : Don't take off your smile , Are we pessimistic, Bumpy 20s , Saigon - Wild City , Mekong - Drifting Alluvium , Going Far Away on a Camper , Drowning Dragon Slips by Burning Plains .
Source: https://nhandan.vn/ra-mat-truyen-ngan-con-roi-hat-ngoai-rung-xa-post889736.html
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