"The Mountains Sing," by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Our September pick is "The Mountains Sing", a multigenerational family saga taking place in Vietnam from 1920 on, through the rise of Communism and the Vietnam War. This novel has received widespread acclaim for its poignant portrayal of Vietnamese history and the resilience of its people. The Goodreads blurb compares it to Pachinko, which was a much-beloved book by this group when we read it together in 2019.

From Goodreads:
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.