Quan Barryβs luminous fiction debut brings us the tumultuous history of modern Vietnam as experienced by a young girl born under mysterious circumstances a few years before the countryβs reunification, a child gifted with the otherworldly ability to hear the voices of the dead.
At the peak of the war in Vietnam, a baby girl is born along the Song Ma River on the night of the full moon. This is Rabbit, who will journey away from her destroyed village with a makeshift family thrown together by war. Here is a Vietnam weβve never encountered before: through Rabbitβs inexplicable but radiant intuition, we are privy to an intimate version of history, from the days of French Indochina and the World War II rubber plantations through the chaos of postwar reunification. With its use of magical realismβRabbitβs ability to βhearβ the deadβthe novel reconstructs a turbulent historical period through a painterly human lens. This is the moving story of one womanβs struggle to unearth the true history of Vietnam while simultaneously carving out a place for herself within it.
© 2003-2026