Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam-Fast Shipping

Description

Title: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

Author: Andrew X Pham

ISBN: 9780312267179

Publisher: Picador

Published: 2000

Binding: Paperback

Language: English

Edition: 1

Condition Note: Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.

Publisher :

Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the Year

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. Intertwined with an often humorous travelogue spanning a year of discovery is a memoir of war, escape, and ultimately, family secrets. 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; on a thousand-mile loop from Narita in South Korea 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.