Slander (Paperback)

Le's fifth novel but first to be translated into English: a tense, bitter portrayal of a Vietnamese family blighted by insanity, adultery, and incest, observed by the daughter who labors to distance herself from her depressing, indeed disastrous, origins. Written in French and first published in 1993, this spare, cunningly fashioned tale juxtaposes a riot of powerful sensory impressions against - and as correlatives of - the narrator's vitriolic memories. The novel's rigorous nihilism, however, undercuts its considerable artistry; the reader shares the narrator's wish to escape from this experience, and to forget it as quickly as possible. (Kirkus Reviews)

Like author Linda Le, the young woman who narrates this novel is from Vietnam and is a writer, a "dirty foreigner writing in French." The narrator has distanced herself not only from Vietnamese society but also from her family. Her story is an exercise in clear-eyed fury revealing three generations of a cursed family. The grandfather was a lunatic the family locked away and declared dead to avoid shame; the father is a failed artist and humiliated cuckold; the mother is a simpering beauty consumed with lust; the uncle is declared insane because of his incestuous love for his sister, who hanged herself. The narrator, on the verge of a profound depression ever since her mother told her she was illegitimate, alternates her story with her uncle's journal. In an acid style burning with compressed lyricism and savage irony, these parallel monologues sketch misfortune's family tree.

Linda Le, who traveled at age fourteen from Saigon to France with a wave of "boat people," is one of the leading young novelists on France's brave new literary scene. "Slander" is Le's fifth--and most celebrated--novel.

General

Imprint:	University of Nebraska Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	European Women Writers
Release date:	October 1996
First published:	October 1996
Authors:	Linda Le
Translators:	Esther Allen
Afterword by:	Esther Allen
Dimensions:	229 x 130 x 10mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade / Trade
Pages:	160
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-7963-6
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-8032-7963-9
Barcode:	9780803279636

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