Flesh - Tapa dura

"Flesh Ha, Khanh. Flesh. Black Heron. Set mostly in turn-of-the-20th-century Hanoi, this debut novel begins and ends with gruesome beheadings. Bearing witness to both executions is T i, a poor teenage village boy quickly forced into manhood. In an effort to reclaim his betrayed bandit father's severed head and finance an auspicious burial, T i spends the next year on an odyssey about his father, their troubled family, and his own unsure self. Indentured to a geomancer who sells his contract to a wealthy Chinese merchant, T i glimpses the backstreet Hanoi life of opium dens, desperate coolies, and the lawless rich--and has his first experience of falling in love, which incites his own vengeful violence. VERDICT Written in a cowboyish twang filled with "yup," "ain't," "em," and "gonna"--possibly meant to simulate the vernacular of the day--the novel never quite loses its anachronistic feel. One more edit might have trimmed some of the meandering passages and extraneous characters, but the fast-paced story pushes briskly to the finish. Readers who enjoy epic sagas set in faraway lands will find absorbing satisfaction here.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC Library Journal, March 15, 2012"-- LIBRARY JOURNAL

"Vietnam-born Ha's beautifully described yet murkily executed first novel, set in his native country at the turn of the 20th century, opens with an infamous yet respected bandit being beheaded in front of his wife and their two young sons. This beginning casts a pall over the tale as Tai, the eldest son, embarks on a far-reaching journey to retrieve his father's skull, find a suitable burial site, and seek revenge on the man who betrayed his father's trust. Through a series of twists and turns--some more developed than others--Tai trades two years' service to a wealthy entrepreneur for land on which to bury the father's remains. During that time, Tai loses his heart to Xiaoli, an indentured servant working in an opium den, and will do anything--including holding off on vengeance and killing a French soldier--to protect her. In this dark, violent, and poetic saga, with disjointed cinematic vignettes that make it often read like a screenplay, characters are not who they seem. While this makes for a thrilling finale, what lingers more than the somewhat weak plot is Ha's descriptive prose." (May)--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

After witnessing the beheading of his father, a notorious bandit, Tai sets out to recover his head and then to find the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.