Customer Reviews

Mother's Beloved: Stories from Laos

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book of 14 short stories by the late Outhine Bounyavong, a noted Lao author, is the first book of contemporary Lao short stories available in English. These deceptively simple stories tell of ordinary Lao people, their customs, traditions, and values, and show the impact of political, economic, and social changes since independence. Despite occasional infelicities in translation, this book will be valuable to those interested in Laos or in Southeast Asian literature. This bi-lingual English-Lao edition should be of particular interest to Lao emigrants and their children. The older adults will be happy with the Lao version, and their children can capture a sense of their parents' former lives through the English translation. Peter Koret provedes a useful introduction to Lao literature and Outhine's place in it.

This book contains fourteen short stories and had just average entertainment. If you want to learn about the Lao culture it will help you understand and it is a good book for that purpose. Unfortunately, the stories were not very exciting. Each one had a nice moral or a lesson to learn and put a smile on my face. But, if you are a busy person it might not be worth your time to read this book. It was not a bad collection; I just expected more.

I thought this book was going to be more of a collection of "folk" stories from Laos. Stories about the turtle and hare. But in actually it is made up of more short and simple stories. The book is written in a very simple term and gave a bit of insight into what Laotians value among themselves and others. It is mostly about giving to the community, being a part of the community, being proud of being a "civil servant". There are observations of corruption in one story. But it is worth a read, as there doesn't seem to be anything like this out there (written by a Lao author). I would keep this book in support of seeing more Lao writers in the future.

The book is excellent, short stories provide insight into culture and the day-to-day of Laos. I enjoyed it very much and it was an excellent gift for the locals, too, since it was not only written in english but also in lao. In addition, the delivery was very fast and just arrived the day before I left my country.

Mother's Beloved gives snapshots of the way of life in the author's homeland of Laos. The English translation is provided next to the original Lao language. Great to share with family.