A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert Olen Butler
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Plot: Political, allegory
- Time of Work: The 1980's, with flashbacks to 1917 and 1918
- Setting: New Orleans, London, Paris
- Principal Characters: Dao, Thang, Loi, Ho Chi Minh
- 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 Story
Dao, a very old Vietnamese man who lives in New Orleans with his family, begins by 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 Europe as a young man. The Vietnamese leader, then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”), lived in London from 1915 to 1917 and in France from 1917 to 1923. Dao was a dishwasher at the London hotel where Ho was a pastry cook. Dao alludes to the work Ho did retouching photos in France.
Dao, who has three dream conversations with Ho,...
[The entire page is 1269 words long]
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