Le Colonial

August 30, 2004
A quest to convert lost souls turns into a battle for survival for three French missionaries in 18th-century Vietnam, or Annam, in Nguyen's richly detailed, evocative second novel. Each missionary hails from a completely different background: dour, ascetic Pierre de Béhaine is a powerful Jesuit bishop; tormented artist François Gervaise is fleeing France after committing a murky misdeed; headstrong 16-year-old Henri Monange joins the order to escape crushing poverty. Scarcely a year into their stay in Annam, the two younger men are sentenced to death by the local mandarin for their parish's failure to pay taxes, but are spared when Gervaise gives up his faith to save Monange and their followers. A changed man, Gervaise turns to Buddhism and pledges his loyalty to a rebel force of peasants, caught in the middle of a civil war between the country's North and South. Meanwhile, Monange joins de Béhaine at the court of Prince Ánh in the South and falls in love with a beautiful servant girl named Xuan, who eventually becomes Ánh's concubine. Nguyen maintains the impressive period detail that made his first novel, The Tapestries
, so compelling, but his narrative is much sharper this time around, with the story drawing energy from the contrast between the characters' various agendas, particularly the constant clashes between Gervaise and Béhaine. Nguyen's take on the meeting of East and West is intelligent, heady and memorable.

September 1, 2004
A French monsignor both morally rigid and politically astute. A young artist, on the run and eager to try his skills in rapturous South China, who is cornered into the priesthood by the wily monsignor. A lad desperately hunting for work in Marseilles who is rescued by the artist priest. In 1773, all three board a ship for Annam (now Vietnam) on a mission to convert the heathens, but their mission soon fragments as it crashes up against the realities of Annamite culture. The double-dealing monsignor disappears into the innards of the royal court, Father Fran ois is humiliated into renouncing his faith by a pagan boy-prince, and soon all three men find themselves on different sides of a complex battle between warlords and outraged peasants. In his second novel, the Vietnamese-born Nguyen (The Tapestries) delivers a rich, satisfying tale that goes just beyond the typical historical saga to raise interesting questions of faith and culture while instructing us in the history of a country with which we were once at war. Recommended for most collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/04.] Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2004
The author of " The Tapestries" (2002) takes readers into late-eighteenth-century Vietnam in his second novel. Francois, a young French painter hiding a terrible secret, implores a cunning, popular priest named Pierre de Behaine to take him on a mission to the French colony Annam (present-day Vietnam). After wresting Francois' secret out of him, de Behaine agrees, making Francois first promise to become a priest. While undertaking his studies in Marseille, Francois encounters Henri, a wayward young boy whom he makes his novice. Together the three men leave for Annam in 1773, and when they arrive, their mission gets off to a successful start. But when the tribute de Behaine promised to a feudal lord fails to appear in due course, Francois and Henri are the ones who are in danger of paying the price. The pair find themselves swept up in the beginnings of a civil war sweeping the country. This is a lush, exciting epic; Nguyen vividly evokes the upheaval that Vietnam faced during the time, both in the political and natural arenas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)