Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

Taken from back cover:Every so often a gifted writer manages to produce a travel book that, while dealing with a place our culture he knows well, still has all the sharpness and strangeness of a dispatch from the dark side of the moon. Such a book is Andrew X. Pham's remarkable "Catfish and Mandala"-Adam Goodheart, the New York Times book review.Far more than a travelogue.... Catfish and Mandala is a seamlessly constructed work deftly combining literary techniques with careful, evenhanded reportage.... Pham opens readers to the full sadness of the human condition on both sides of the world, marveling at spiritual resilience amid irreconcilable facts.---Roland Kelts, The Philadelphia Inquirer.Engaging, vigorously told.... A fresh and original look at how proud the anemones on the wars losing side reconciled having their identity abruptly hyphenated to Vietnamese- American.---Gavin Scott, Chicago Tribune.