About this book
Overview
Praise for Linh Dinh:
“[Linh] Dinh’s abrupt epiphanies mix A.D.D. with Thoreau’s economy, Calvino’s globe-trotting, and a pungent eroticism reminiscent of Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.”—The Village Voice
“[Linh Dinh’s Blood and Soap] owes a certain debt to Jorge Luis Borges, but uses Borgesian metafiction and genre-bending to depict a sense of absurdity, confusion, and displacement peculiar to being a contemporary world citizen.”—Matthew Sharpe, The Brooklyn Rail
“[Linh] Dinh reveals a refreshing sense of utter irreverence and experimental fun.”—AsianWeek
Protagonists Kim Lan and Hoang Long marry in Saigon during the Vietnam War, uniting in a setting that allows Linh Dinh’s dark, deadpan humor to flourish. Describing his mushrooming cast of characters in unsentimental and sometimes absurd ways, Dinh embraces contradictions with the surreal exuberance of Matthew Sharpe and the stylistic élan of Italo Calvino.
A recipient of the Pew Fellowship, the David T. Wong Fellowship, and the Asian American Literary Award, Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House and Blood and Soap; and four books of poems, All Around What Empties Out, American Tatts, Borderless Bodies, and Jam Alerts. He is editor of the anthologies Night, Again and Three Vietnamese Poets. Love Like Hate is his first novel.
