Catfish & Mandala: A Vietnamese Odyssey

By (author): "Andrew X. Pham"
Publish Date: 1999
Catfish & Mandala: A Vietnamese Odyssey
ISBN0006552234
ISBN139780006552239
AsinCatfish & Mandala: A Vietnamese Odyssey
Original titleCatfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
Vietnamese-born Andrew Pham finally returns to Saigon, not as a success showering money and gifts onto his family, but as an emotional shipwreck, desperate to find out who he really is. When his sister, a post-operative transsexual, committed suicide, Pham sold all his possessions and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert; around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness. At first meant to facilitate forgetfulness, Pham's travels turn into an unforgettable, eye-opening search for cultural identity which flashes back to his parent's courtship in Vietnam, his father's imprisonment by the Vietcong, and his family's nail-bitingly narrow escape as boat people. Lucid, witty and beautifully written,