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Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

BRONZE DRUM

Phong Nguyen

A Novel of Sisters and War

A richly imagined novel, based on historical fact, about the military defense mounted by Vietnamese women against Chinese invaders.

Two sisters raised an army of women in the Vietnam of 2,000 years ago to fight against the occupying Chinese. It was women who succeeded in driving out the invaders, because the men had been conscripted to fight with the Chinese in foreign wars. This army employed the Bronze Drum to communicate with its far-flung warriors, and when the Chinese invaders eventually returned, the Bronze Drum was banned for a thousand years.
The story of these two heroic sisters is known to every child in Vietnam. Now Phong Nguyen brings it vividly to life for a wider audience.

Phong Nguyen is the author of three novels: BRONZE DRUM, Roundabout: An Improvisational Fiction, and The Adventures of Joe Harper, winner of the Prairie Heritage Book Award; and two short fiction collections: Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History and Memory Sickness and Other Stories. He is the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing at the University of Missouri, where he teaches fiction-writing.
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Published 2022-08-01 by Grand Central Publishing

Comments

Italy: Piemme;

Foreign licence Client

“Readers will not want to put down this epic feminist page-turner.”

Review Publishers Weekly

"The sisters have long been revered as national icons in Vietnam, and this fictionalized account of their rise to military greatness includes extensive, cinematic descriptions of battlefield tactics and imagined scenes of heartache and horror while not avoiding references to mistakes in judgment (diplomatic and otherwise) they may have made. Nguyen reminds us that the power of women is nothing new." Read more...

Review Kirkus Reviews

“As groundbreaking as it is gripping, Phong Nguyen's BRONZE DRUM is filled with impeccably researched, vivid storytelling that blends history and myth in spellbinding ways. A masterful novel--and an important one.” —Liam Callanan, author of The Cloud Atlas and Paris by the Book “This fast-paced novel features palace intrigue, sex, deception, scholarship, bravery, love, honor, and power. Nguyen has the rare ability to render events that happened long ago in a way that feels contemporary and even timely. I'm in awe of his storytelling powers and was captivated from the first page to the last.” —Christina Clancy, author of The Second Home “BRONZE DRUM is a remarkable novel of two women's fierceness and heartbreak, their rebellion forming a foundation of Vietnamese history, freedom and independence that Nguyen brings vividly to life on the page.” —Anne Valente, author of The Desert Sky Before Us and Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down “Phong Nguyen's novel BRONZE DRUM is part epic history, part romantic drama, and all mastery. You'll devour this joyous, defiant novel while cheering for the Trungs and wishing their magnificent, feminist forces could lead a rebellion here, today.” —Whitney Terrell, author of The Good Lieutenant

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