num_pages: 320
description: How can you stand up to tyranny when your own identity is in turmoil?Vietnam is a haunted country and Dr. Nguyen Georges-Minh is a haunted man. In 1908 the French rule Saigon but uneasily; dissent whispers through the corridors of the city. Each day more Vietnamese rebels are paraded through the streets towards the gleaming blade of the guillotine now a permanent fixture in the main square and a gruesome warning to those who would attempt to challenge colonial rule. It is a warning that Georges-Minh will not heed. A Vietnamese national and Paris-educated physician he is obsessed by guilt over his material wealth and nurses a secret loathing for the French connections that have made him rich even as they have torn his beloved country apart. With a close-knit group of his friends calling themselves the Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains Georges-Minh plots revenge on the French for the savagery they have shown to the Vietnamese. And it falls to Georges-Minh to create a poison to mix into the Christmas dinner of a garrison of French soldiers. It is an act that will send an unmistakable message to the French: Get out of Vietnam. But the assassination attempt goes horribly wrong. Forced to flee into the deep jungles of the outer provinces Georges-Minh must care for his infant son manage the growing madness of his wife and elude capture by the hill tribes and the small--but lethal--pockets of French sympathizers. Journey Prize winner Yasuko Thanh transports us into a vivid historical Vietnam one that is filled with chaotic streets teeming marketplaces squalid opium dens and angry ghosts that exist side by side with the living.
language: English
title: Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains
publisher: Hamish Hamilton