The Zenith

Description

Memory is the one who builds you a permanent court of justice. Memory is the one at your side from whom you cannot run…

A sweeping tale of thwarted love, political intrigue, and the price of power—“The Doctor Zhivago of Vietnam” (Boston Globe)—about Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of modern Vietnam, a man beloved by millions but shrouded in controversy and mystery

Vietnam’s most popular dissident writer, Duong Thu Huong has won acclaim for her exceptional lyricism and psychological acumen, as well as for her unflinching portraits of modern Vietnam and its culture and people. Built on 15 years of research, The Zenith imagines the final months in the life of Ho Chi Minh—president of North Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969—at an isolated mountain compound where he is imprisoned both physically and emotionally. 

Complex, daring, and elegiac, Huong’s novel weaves Ho Chi Minh’s story together with narratives of members of his inner circle and a village elder, illuminating the personal costs of political struggle, the addictive quality of power and influence, and how a tragedy can threaten to engulf not just one individual but an entire nation. Most radically, it is a multidimensional portrait of Ho Chi Minh himself; a man who is often painted as a saint, martyr, or puppet, but whom Huong portrays as a real person whose life encapsulated humanity’s capacity for vision, greed, pain, love, and fallibility. 

An epic masterpiece that is both a gripping political thriller and a haunting excavation of the human heart, The Zenith is an unforgettable novel that leaves readers unsettled, transformed, and closer to life’s fundamental mysteries.Praise for The Zenith:
 
“[The Zenith] bravely imagines the final months of Ho Chi Minh’s life. It is the Doctor Zhivago of Vietnam, a book that explodes the sacred pieties of a Communist revolution by looking at the cost that revolution exacted on individual lives and romances . . . A vast and moving story about a nation liberated from colonialism only to be bound to an inhuman ideology, one that stripped even its heralded leader of his flesh and blood . . . a book that looks down on the Communist experiment from a lofty height and attempts to return it to a human scale. Remarkably, it succeeds, especially in its portrait of the country’s leader.” —The Boston Globe
 
“In this wonderful novel, Duong Thu Huong fearlessly confronts the merciless regime, describing the devastating consequences of the Vietnam War. Through a few families and their intimate stories, she merges political tragedy with human tragedies.” —Elle

“The Zenith, lyrically translated by husband-wife translators Stephen B. Young and Hoa Pham Young, is part modern Vietnamese fable, part tragedy . . . the idea of power clashing with conscience forms the core of the novel.” —The Toronto Star
 
“[Huong] turns her penetrating gaze toward the highest, most venerated seat of power in Communist Vietnam: the revolution’s architect and saint, Ho Chi Minh . . . Huong [is] a master detective or the gutsiest of fiction writers.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Told from multiple points of view via characters whose lives unwittingly intersect . . . A fluid, nuanced, and densely intricate look at a culture still relatively unknown to Western readers, Huong’s challenging novel offers rich detail and provocative insights.” —Booklist

“Huong’s lyrical narrative, developed at a deliberate pace, is sometimes reminiscent of Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil . . . it also has undertones of Anatoly Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat . . . a complex, politically daring story, much of which will be unfamiliar to Western readers—and that demands to be read for that very reason.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“The Zenith is worth the time and attention, every page revealing richer, deeper treasures, poetic and moving, a grand yet intimate canvas of history, ideology, love affairs, and tragic beauty — most of all beauty, of the country, of the women, and of the heart.” —Historical Novel Society

“Huong is an imposing figure in Vietnamese literature . . . Much as Hilary Mantel in her Cromwell books, Huong makes the historical personal . . . one has the sense of a Tolstoyesque breadth and depth of both landscape and character . . . The Zenith represents a tour de force from an important writer taking great risks, political and literary. Beginning with a bold initial premise, Huong follows through with an epic on an impressive scale that does that premise justice.” —Fiction Writers Review

 “This is an important book that blends passion, clarity, a great understanding of the human heart, and a keen desire to pay tribute to those lost to history.” —Le Monde

Praise for the work of Duong Thu Huong:

“Extraordinary and profoundly tragic.” —Boston Sunday Globe

“Astonishingly powerful.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Breathtakingly original.” —San Francisco ChronicleDuong Thu Huong is an award-winning Vietnamese novelist and activist living in exile in Paris. Her novels include Paradise of the Blind, No Man’s Land, Memories of a Pure Spring, and Novel Without a Name.

INTRODUCTION

Duong Thu Huong’s epic novel is a heart–breaking exploration of the heights and depths of the human soul as expressed through the tumultuous political history of Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. Following three separate but related narrative streams, Duong offers a penetrating insight into the personal and moral struggles of both the leaders and common citizens of a country embroiled in war.

The first narrative concentrates on the aging President Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnamese Nationalist Movement and considered the venerated father of modern Vietnam. The president is living the final period of his life as a virtual prisoner at a Buddhist monastery overlooking a small rural village, having been banished by his political subordinates, ostensibly to protect his failing health. Watched over day and night by doctors and guards, he has nothing but the excruciating memories of a revolutionary betrayed by his own comrades. The President wrestles with the ghosts of his past, including his young beautiful wife, assassinated by party members, and the son he will never know. The leader’s only remaining ally and friend is Vu, a political official also devastated by the failure of the ideals of the Revolution.

In the Woodcutters’ hamlet below the president’s confinement quarters, readers are introduced to a concurrent story that concerns the events leading up to the death of a village elder. Mr. Quang, the wealthiest and most generous village resident, has been killed by Quy, his eldest son. After the death of his first wife, Mr. Quang brings home a beautiful and very young bride who threatens Quy’s dreams of inheritance. Again we witness the inevitable betrayal brought about by a human heart poisoned by greed, thirst for power and fear. The president himself takes great interest in the story of the Woodcutter, even descending from the mountaintop to visit the family during the funeral. Although the national leader and the village elder reacted differently to their circumstances, their fates run a parallel course.

Finally, readers are introduced to Huong An, a commander in the War Against the Americans and the president’s brother–in–law. Although they never meet, An and the president are linked by the murder of Xuan, the president’s wife. An’s story is also one of profound loss as the true motives of the Party become apparent.

Officially considered a “dissident writer” in her homeland, Duong takes a great risk in this novel by exposing the hypocrisy and failure of the initial motivations behind the Communist revolution in Vietnam. She asks her readers to reconsider the fateful events of history, recognizing the human error and confusion that lead to tragedy on both a grand and small scale. The Zenith is a frighteningly honest portrait of the human struggle to manifest lofty ideals, and the shadows of greed and lust for power that so often destroy them.

ABOUT DUONG THU HUONG

Duong Thu Huong, author of Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name (both from Penguin) is an advocate of human rights and democratic political reform, and was expelled from the Communist Party and imprisoned without trial in 1991. The Vietnamese government has effectively banned all of her novels. She now lives in Paris.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

A “zenith” is defined as “the point in the sky or celestial sphere directly above an observer; the time at which something is most powerful or successful.” Why would Duong Thu Huong choose this title? In what ways does the title illuminate some of the novel’s key themes?

What personal characteristics of President Ho Chi Minh contributed to his rise to such an elevated political position? In what ways are these character traits also responsible for his downfall? Does he have a fatal flaw?

The novel centers thematically on the uses and abuses of power. Which characters show the most destructive uses of power, both in the resistance movement and in the lives of the villagers of the Woodcutters’ Hamlet? Do any of the characters display power constructively?

How does Huong use descriptions of the natural world to reflect the inner mental/ emotional states of the characters?

How are women portrayed in the novel? How are women viewed within the Vietnamese culture of this time period? What differences and similarities exist between Ms. Xuan, Van, Ms. Viu, Miss Ngan and the women of Quy’s family?

Historically, tradition plays a major role in Vietnamese political and social life. How does tradition enrich the characters’ lives? In what ways is it limiting or even destructive?

Le Phuong says, “A revolution is like a pregnancy, and the baby who comes into the world—even if not a monster—will be totally different from the dream or imagination of those who created it” [p.316]. How do the president, Vu, and other party members view the results of their efforts within the Nationalist Movement? How does this statement play out in the various parent–child relationships throughout the novel?

How do the narrative arcs of the President and Vu, Mr. Quang, and Comrade An work together? Does the structure of the novel create suspense?

Do any of the characters make peace with their perceived failures, losses and the disappointments of life? Is there any sense of redemption?

At the end of the novel, just before his death, the President imagines the personal and political outcome of reacting differently to Ms. Xuan’s assassination. Why did he fail to respond to the betrayal of his subordinates? Do you think he could or should have reacted in a different way?

How has your view of the Vietnam War changed after reading the novel?

US

Additional information

Dimensions	1.1000 × 5.5000 × 8.4000 in
Imprint	Penguin Books
ISBN-13	09780143123712
ISBN-10	0143123718
Author	Duong Thu Huong
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC051000, FIC008000
Subjects	historical fiction books, vietnamese fiction, novels about vietnam, ho chi minh, vietnamese novels, duong thu huong, political novels, war novels, vietnam novel, vietnamese history, epic books, political thrillers, best selling books for women, war book, asian fiction, novels for women best sellers, historical, historical novels, books for women best sellers, fiction books, FIC051000, military fiction, FIC008000, alternate history, literary fiction, historical fiction, book club, best historical novels, novels, novel, memory, Communism