0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Books > Biography > Literary

Buy Now

The Fifth Book of Peace (Paperback, 1st Vintage International ed) Loot Price: R611
Discovery Miles 6 110
You Save: R54 (8%)
The Fifth Book of Peace (Paperback, 1st Vintage International ed): Maxine Hong Kingston

The Fifth Book of Peace (Paperback, 1st Vintage International ed)

Maxine Hong Kingston

Series: Vintage Contemporaries

 (sign in to rate)
List price R665 Loot Price R611 Discovery Miles 6 110 | Repayment Terms: R57 pm x 12* You Save R54 (8%)

Bookmark and Share

Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days

The Fifth Book of Peace opens as Maxine Hong Kingston, driving home from her father's funeral in the early 1990s, discovers that her neighborhood in the Oakland-Berkeley hills is engulfed in flames. Her home burns to the ground, and with it, all her earthly possessions, including her novel-in-progress. Kingston, who at the time was deeply disturbed by the Persian Gulf War, decides that she must understand her own loss of all she possessed as a kind of shadow-experience of war: a lesson about what it would be like to experience up close its utter devastation. Thus she embarks on a mission to re-create her novel from scratch, to rebuild her life, and to reach out to veterans of war and share with them her views as a lover of peace.
In the middle section of this remarkable book, Kingston reconstructs for us her lost novel, the lush and compelling story of the Chinese-American Wittman Ah Sing and his wife, Tana-California artists who flee to Hawaii to evade the draft during the Vietnam War. Wittman and Tana help to create an official Sanctuary for deserters and GIs who've returned devastated by their experiences in Vietnam-not unlike, as it turns out, the metaphorical sanctuary Maxine creates, back in her real world, by inviting war veterans to participate in writing workshops. As the vets share their stories, she teaches them both the value of writing-the accurate transcription of what is in the heart-and the value of community.
Paradoxically, the stories of war and its terrors become for her and the vets a literature of peace-words that enable them to achieve peace, at least within themselves. Moving among the vets with her Buddhist-inflected wisdom and at times humorousself-doubts, weaving their stories together with her own struggle to reorient herself after the fire, Maxine Hong Kingston is at times a kind of sprite, an almost weightless spirit, who guides others toward a better place, and at times a challenging teacher, who will not let us turn from the spectacle of a world so often at war.

"From the Hardcover edition.

General

Imprint: Vintage Books
Country of origin: United States
Series: Vintage Contemporaries
Release date: September 2004
First published: October 2004
Authors: Maxine Hong Kingston
Dimensions: 205 x 138 x 22mm (L x W x T)
Format: Paperback - Trade
Pages: 401
Edition: 1st Vintage International ed
ISBN-13: 978-0-679-76063-4
Categories: Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Literary
Books > Biography > Literary
LSN: 0-679-76063-6
Barcode: 9780679760634

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!

Partners