Customer Reviews

Dragon Hunt

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From the get go, the images are fresh-even in the translation-and the stories, although sometimes rather twisted, profoundly real. Tran Vu's stories are graphic and occasionally shocking, but his narrative flows through the book from the first to the last page and I found it quite difficult not to devour this book. First book I have read in a long time that actually made an impression on me.

I read a short story by the author that was included in Las Vegas Noir. This is a collection of five short stories that total 146 pages. Much gruesome violence including rape and incest. This is a fairly quick read that most surely will keep your attention.

Of the five stories, the first one about the author's boat escape from communist Vietnam in 1972 was the closest to reality. The other four stories are fiction works describing the turmoil that gripped the refugees and transformed them from victims of a tragedy (war, fall of Saigon) into killers or perpetrators of violent acts in an unreal, disjointed, and sensual world.

Could this be true? It is ... in the mind of the author. This is to my knowledge the best description of what could go through the minds of these refugees who had suffered so much throughout the war and were forced to escape communist Vietnam under frightening circumstances.