Chinatown by Thuận, trans. Nguyễn An Lý

“[An] astonishing work of sharp wit and profound tragedy that refuses to be flattened into a single representation.” — Lamorna Ash, Times Literary Supplement

The metro shudders to a halt – an unattended bag has been found, and terrorism is suspected. For the narrator, a young Vietnamese woman teaching English in the Parisian suburbs, time stops. Her son falls asleep on her shoulder and a long interior monologue begins, looking back over her life thus far. From her constrained childhood in post-communist Hanoi, to a long period of study in Leningrad during the Gorbachev period, she tries to understand everything that has brought her to this point.

Translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý, whose translation won the 2023 National Translation Award. We'll be reading the Tilted Axis edition (£9.99) – there's a US edition from New Directions with the same translation if you already have it.