num_pages: 344
description: Catfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland. Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert, around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.
language: English
title: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
titlecomplete: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
genres: Asia, Biography, Travel, Asian Literature, Autobiography, Nonfiction, Adventure, History, Memoir, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 6235
places: Saigon, Phan Thiet, Qui Nhan, Rach Gia, Hanoi, Mui Ne, Vung Tau, Jakarta, Tokyo, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Hue, San Francisco, California, Ninh Binh, San Jose, California
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Oregon Book Award
category: Nonfiction (Finalist), awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Picador