Elevator in Sài Gòn
Thuận, Translated by Nguyễn An Lý
Tilted Axis Press: 2024
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Elevator in Sài Gòn begins with a statement of death: “My mother died on a night of torrential rain.” This death unleashes its own torrent, dredging up the past and the lives of those left behind. It’s a clever beginning that draws the reader into this English translation of Thuận’s 2013 novel—the original Vietnamese version did not begin this way.

The narrator’s mother had died suddenly, mysteriously: “In such a freak accident that our language probably had no word to name it.” She’d fallen from the top floor to the ground of an empty elevator box, a gruesome end where “only her face was intact”. Before this, she’d dedicated her life to successive roles: a model party member, a model citizen, a model head of a university sub-department. She’d been a perfect representation of a citizen under communism, living in a small quarter of Hanoi where everyone knew everyone else, but not as well as the local police knew everyone. Only a notebook, with a photo of a mysterious, handsome young Frenchman and his address in Paris, betrayed her flawless façade. It leaves her young daughter desperate to understand the truth of what had been hidden and the impact it had on their family. It’s on one of the daughter’s trips in pursuit of this mystery figure that the Vietnamese version opens.

• Tags: Issue 36, Khải Đơn, Thuận, Vietnam