Isabelle Müller
Loan – Aus dem Leben eines Phönix
360 Seiten
ISBN Taschenbuch 978-3000502187
ISBN E-Book 978-3000502057
ASIN Hörbuch B019570IBE
Get Isabelle Müller’s new book, Loan – From the Life of a Phoenix, exclusively on Amazon.
What personal memories did this book evoke for me as a Vietnamese woman? First, my grandfather, Phan Van Long, was the personal assistant to the 12th Emperor Khai Dinh. Second, I sat at school side by side with the daughter of the last 13th Emperor, Bao Dai, Princess Phuong Minh, in Saigon “Les Lauriers.”
This book truly brings the intellectual, emotional, cultural, and political life of this special period in Vietnam to life in a thrilling and vivid way. I warmly recommend this fascinating book to every “Vietnamese” and “friend of this country.”
Thien Huong, former student at the Université Paris-Sorbonne
In “Loan – From the Life of a Phoenix,” Isabelle Müller tells the true story of the emancipation of her mother, Loan, a headstrong and rebellious Vietnamese woman who fled a forced marriage at the age of just twelve to find her way back to herself and a free, self-determined life on a long and often dangerous odyssey through Vietnam, France, and Algeria.
The historical backdrop to their search for identity is the cultural and political upheaval brought about by French colonization, the Japanese invasion at the end of World War II, the partition of Vietnam in the 1950s, and France’s war against Algeria in the 1960s.
Loan – From the Life of a Phoenix offers readers insight into a fairytale-like, yet at times archaic and brutal, culture in China’s neighboring country. It tells of dignity, tolerance, and acceptance, of an exotic culture from an almost forgotten time, and thus closes an important literary gap in the history of Vietnam.
