a 15+year old epic novel aching to be made into film

 Here are the Barnes Nobles reviews of my little-read historical novel featuring Vietnamese women, first published by Ravensyard LTD. indie in 2005, making me the first Vietnam-born published writer who wrote bilingually in both languages (not translation, but original writing):  

(The last review was done professionally for the Vietnamese American community back then, in 2005, by my writer-distant cousin nguyen khoa Thai Anh (the Nguyen Khoa family and my maternal family from Hue are related by marriage (at the generation level of my maternal grandfather).  (I did not know the reviewer was my distant cousin until a year later...)

https://www.bookdepository.com/publishers/Ravensyard-Publishing

https://www.bookdepository.com/publishers/Ravensyard-Publishing

Overview

Uyen Nicole Duong’s Daughters of the River Huong takes listeners on a century-long journey into the extraordinary history of Vietnam, all seen through the eyes of Simone, a precocious and passionate teenager who reveals the lives of her Vietnamese ancestors. Beginning with Huyen Phi, the Mystique Concubine from the extinct Kingdom of Champa, to her daughters, Madame Cinnamon and Ginseng, and finally to Simone’s own mother, Duong gives listeners a compelling, historic, and sometimes voyeuristic view into a world few have experienced. From the monarchy to French colonialism, from American intervention to the fall of Saigon and Communist rule, the lives of these women are profoundly changed by history…and perhaps history is changed by them. The writing is poetic, the stories gripping, and whether you are a lover of romance, history, or the human condition, this novel delivers.

Meet the Author

Vietnam-born Uyen Nicole Duong arrived in the United States at the age of sixteen, a political refugee from a country torn apart by war. She received a Bachelor of Science in Communication and Journalism from Southern Illinois University, a law degree from the University of Houston, and the advanced LLM degree from Harvard. She was also trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena. She has been a journalist, public education administrator, attorney, law professor, and a self-taught painter whose work focuses on l’Art Brut. The author resides in Houston, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Average Review: 4.8

Average Rating: 4.8

4 Reviews



Rating: 5 out of 5

Beautifully Written...


3093 days ago

Guest

I could not put this book down once I started reading it. The book was intriguing and wonderfully written. In between the rich history of Hue and her people, the author masterfully told a love story that was beautiful, mistical and tragic. I hope to find more beautiful novels about Vietnam such as The Daughters of the River Huong. Realistically, I just can't imagine there is another novel better that this one.



underread, understated beauty



3720 days ago

Guest

this novel appears under-read, under-rated due to its obscure publisher...it is a rare beauty, full of nostalgic romanticism. One does not find work like that in this day and age any more. Too bad the publisher and its copy editing/proofreading staff did not do justice to this luminiscent beauty.



Delightful and Illuminating: Daughters of the River Huong



3766 days ago

Guest

Daughters of the River Huong, I believe, offers an archetypal remedy for an incompleteness and a longing deep in the American collective consciousness. Two weeks ago I took a boatride on the River Huong, serenaded by musicians playing traditional music from Hue. It was the fulfillment of a desire I¿ve had for many years¿much enriched by the images and feelings described in Uyen Nicole Duong¿s exquisite book. At one point, the musicians sang a well-known and enchanting song about the ten virtues of the Vietnamese woman. Under the full moon, in that boat gently rocking on the River Huong, I was overwhelmed by the sentiments of that song sung by those seven women singers. I was reminded of a comment made by historians Will and Ariel Durant, who wrote that if the sins and good works of the Middle Ages were measured on a scale, the balance would be tipped in favor of goodness¿tipped by the weight of the noble works done by the women of that period. I was also reminded of a comment by a Vietnamese friend and social observer, who recently told me that he gives all credit for the preservation of van hoa Viet Nam (Vietnamese culture), from time immemorial, to ¿the Ladies of Viet Nam.¿ I think that most readers of Daughters of the River Huong will be inspired by the remarkable grace and strength of Vietnamese women and by the beauty and profundity of Vietnamese culture. Readers, too, will be left with a better understanding of why, transcendental to issues of politics and economics, we Americans remain fascinated by Viet Nam to the present day.



River Huong: A novel or Woman's Study?



3983 days ago

Guest

DAUGHTERS OF THE RIVER HUONG: A Vietnamese royal concubine and her descendants by Uyen Nicole Duong ISBN 1-928928-16-I, U.S.:RavensYard Publishing, Ltd, Trade paperback, 271 pp. SRP $17.95 Uyen Nicole Duong¿s Daughters of the River Huong: A Vietnamese royal concubine and her descendants (1) is a new historical work that is about to join the rank of great contemporary epic novels. If it weren¿t for the fictionalized aspect of this true-to-life love story, it could well be an interestingly humanist, thoroughly researched woman study that delves into a century of Viet-Nam tumultuous history: from French colonial time to revolutionary struggle for independence to today¿s socialist cum capitalist society. Hers is a memorable authentic, and genuinely refreshing female voice of the new century adding to our understanding of Viet-Nam¿s soul and conflict. One can¿t recall a few novelists in this genre without crossing into another era such as Margaret Mitchell¿s Gone with the Wind, Boris Pasternak¿s Dr. Zhivago, Graham Greene¿s The Quiet American, Marguerite Duras¿s l¿Amant (The Lover), or not of a so distant time, Anthony Grey¿s Saigon: A Novel or Amy Tan¿s The Joy Luck Club. While great writers transcend their geographical origins with the universality of the human condition, their literary style depends greatly on the skillful hand of translators. Duong¿s original English work faces no such barrier, her poetic, evocative and natural literary style stands on its own. In fact in order to do justice to Duong¿s poetic and musical prose, one may need to properly match her writing with the sensuous verses of Beaudelaire¿s Les Fleurs du Mal and classical opus and arias that she uses as backdrop throughout her work. Yet few of the current Vietnamese-American writers (2) have lived through the period that they have written about, nor have the breadth of their novels reached the historical scope or touched the height of human¿s emotion as Uyen Nicole Duong¿s Daughters of the River Huong. Of all these above-mentioned novels, perhaps Uyen Nicole Duong¿s come closest to the romanticism and poignancy in Duras¿ autobiography, The Lover and a trace of sorrow and nostagia in Michael Ondaatje¿s The English Patient. What separates Uyen Nicole Duong¿s book from her earlier contemporary such as Bao Ninh¿s The Sorrow of War and Duong thu Huong¿s Paradise of the Blind is her novel¿s mass appeal. What readers have here is the making of a movie of epic scale that spans four generations and three continents, from present-day Manhattan to ancient Hue to romantic Paris, to Texas and back to Saigon (Ho chi Minh City). The story progresses from the French empire in Viet-Nam -- with Hue forbidden-city¿s inner sanctum: emperor Thuan Thanh¿s (his character is loosely based on the composite figures of two Vietnamese emperors, Thanh Thai and Duy Tan) royal concubine Huyen Phi, her transformation from humble beginning as a paddle girl on the river Huong to become a matriarch of her bloodline -- to the dying days of colonialism, when her exotic descendants began to take roots in the mystical Violet City of Hue to the American involvement and its untimely debacle. The novel¿s early plot reminds us The Year of Living Dangerously and The Killing Fields, where brave and endearing American and European reporters stay back to witness the fall of the city and the people they love change hands. In this case, Christopher Sanders, an American journalist of a major news network from New York, was the primary hero who saved the beautiful and virginal Vietnamese Lolita from an uncertain fate and brought her to America. It is a poignant tale of survival told from several women¿s point of views, all inexorably connected to the esoteric uncrowned empress Huyen Phi and her extinct kingdom of Champa.