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Faraway the Southern Sky:A Novel
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Ho Chi Minh’s lost formative years in Paris
Fleeing persecution in Indochina, the young Ho Chi Minh arrived in Paris as World War I was sputtering to a close. A painfully shy twentysomething, he joined the shadowy figures of the demimonde, the radicals, poor artists, prostitutes, the luckless, and rebellious.
Six years later, he boarded a train bound for the young Soviet Union as the fiery, passionate leader of the Vietnamese independence movement and a founder of the French Communist Party. He had lived under various pseudonyms in a succession of seedy apartments. There had been arrests and beatings, jobs in restaurants and photo shops, revolutionary writing in the Bibliothèque nationale, and meetings with Chaplin and Colette, all while being dogged by French spies—much of what we know about the young man’s Paris years is thanks to that surveillance.
Searching for traces of the past in the streets of today, Joseph Andras hears echoes of other angry histories, from terror attacks to tent encampments to the protests of the Gilets jaunes. This intensely lyrical, genre-bending book is a meditation on what could be called the grandeur of the poor, the free, the outcast, and the rebellious—people who might not find a place in history books but without whom history could not be written.
Praise for Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us
- "Electrifying ... insists on plumbing the thorniest details of history’s scandal, suggesting—convincingly—that certain truths are best revealed in fiction." Kaiama L. Glover, New York Times
- "A very beautiful book to reflect on: when a 'traitor' preserves our ‘dignity.'" Éric Vuillard, author of The War of the Poor and The Order of the Day
- "An austerely compelling account ... Andras's bleak account is leavened by passages of vibrant lyricism." Laura Garmeson, Times Literary Supplement
- "Andras delivers a brisk, angry slap of outraged idealism … Powerful." Boyd Tonkin, Spectator
- "Tightly coiled ... Andras is fastidious about adhering to the known facts. His restraint is commendable." Literary Review
Reviews
In this eloquent and impassioned novella, Andras charts a course through contemporary Paris in the footsteps of Vietnamese leader Hô Chí Minh ... his flâneur's chronicle builds to a richly layered and emotionally honest reckoning with the promises and failures of a great leader. Andras's meditation strikes a nerve.
A buzzing, bustling, genre-blending book that balances fact and fiction ... the most successful passages arise when Andras extracts truth from either fact or fiction to depict a more real-seeming person behind the historical giant, as when a young H? Chí Minh borrows Marx's Capital from a Parisian library and, rather than peruse and annotate its pages, 'the big book served as his pillow.'
More than a read. An experience.
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Faraway the Southern Sky, the title of which is derived from a poem Ho Chi Minh wrote in the '40s, is an extraordinary literary achievement because it makes real and present the scuffling life and education of the very young man who grew up to be the old sage who inspired the chants of "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, NLF Is Gonna Win" 50 years after those days in Paris.
, Arts Fuse -
This brief but layered novel follows a nameless figure wandering around Paris searching for traces of Ho Chi Minh, who lived there as a young revolutionary, near the end of the First World War.
, The New Yorker -
This brief novel is a lyrical reflection on a young man who would challenge two empires and, in doing so, change the world. It's well worth the read.
, Counterpunch -
What makes Andras's strolling story all his own is his zeal and yearning ... The length of the book (less than 80 pages) keeps Andras's narrative taut and focused enough to forgive its occasional moments of grandeur. Still, the proclamations are underlined by a sense of purpose: Andras wants his readers to join him in protest.
, The Washington Post -
Andras's fictionalisation of Ho Chi Minh's time in Paris reminds us that nobody is born a fully formed revolutionary ... a lyrical reflection on a young man who would challenge two empires and, in doing so, change the world.
, Morning Star -
Shimmies elegantly between speculative fiction, biography, psychogeography and revolutionary tract, managing to be all and none of those things.
, ArtReview -
As a novelist, Andras understands that narrative can help bestow immortality upon individuals whose fates have been suppressed or simply forgotten. The novelist, like the biographer, is capable of rewriting and even reviving the dead, to allow us to understand them anew.
, The Nation -
Faraway The Southern Sky by the enigmatic Joseph Andras is a truly revolutionary book
, Scotsman -
Experiencing the sheer thrill of a skilled writer exercising considerable talents with absolute freedom, fused with the inspiring human portrait of a youthful Nguyên, is a formidable potion. This is an unforgettable and original book.
, Asian Review of Books -
In Southern Sky, Andras simply offers his hand to guide us on a walk around Hô's Paris: he likely lived here; he may have met some notable person there; a police informant had a conversation with him in that building. Andras studiously follows the clues and whispers of Hô's beginnings as a revolutionary...a brief and fierce political work.
, Asymptote