Interview

Kien Nguyen talks about his memories of his grandfather whose true story provides the inspiration for Nguyen's first novel.

I was six days old when my grandfather first told me his life stories. I was lying in a small bamboo cradle suspended by ropes from a high wooden beam. From the window, the summer sky shone like an inverted ocean, motionless except for a few distant clouds. Hummingbirds fluttered over the garden fountain, then disappeared into the pomegranate trees.

While the ceiling swayed he would speak to me in a melodic tone, always with the same introduction: "During the winter months, the Perfume River was chilly, especially at dawn." In my recollection, the world of my grandfather was simple, irregular, and deliberately void of anything material. No photo albums or mementos helped illustrate his tales, only his soothing voice, flowing in the river of his memory.

At times, my grandmother would join him. In the background, she would pluck the strings of her lute and sing Vietnamese folk songs. Between the two of them, my childhood was filled with wonder. I could always close my eyes and allow myself to be transported back to a time when my grandfather was a child. While in the rest of the world, children grew up with fairy tales, I lived in my grandfather's stream of consciousness, feasting on his thoughts, feeling ...