A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert Olen Butler
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Short story
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Traveling or travelers, Communism or communists, Politics, France or French people, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Ghosts or apparitions, Dreams, Paris, 1910’s, 1980’s, Asia or Asians, England or English people, Violence, Vietnam War, New Orleans, Assassination, London, Western Europe or western Europeans, Buddhism, Louisiana, Vietnam or Vietnamese people
- Locales: New Orleans, LA, Paris, France, London, England
The title story in Butler's 1992 collection begins with Dao, a very old Vietnamese man who now lives in New Orleans with his family, recounting his most recent dream in which he is visited by the ghost of former Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, whom he had known in London in 1917 and in Paris in 1918. Dao's three dreamed conversations with Ho Chi Minh alternate with his narration of scenes in which he becomes convinced that his extended family is keeping a secret from him. He suspects, however, that the mystery is connected with the recent murder of the publisher of a Vietnamese...
[The entire page is 599 words long]
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