Meet the author Đoàn Bùi: the book «Xứ sở vô danh»

   An evening in Huế given over to a book that a French journalist of Vietnamese descent worked on for more than ten years and that has only now reached Vietnamese. The author sits down with readers to talk about memory, loss and why anyone writes down the thing that hurts most, with consecutive interpretation from French.

   The author is Đoàn Bùi (Doan Bui), a reporter for the French weekly L'Obs. She was born in Le Mans to a family from southern Vietnam, has written on migration, exile and identity since 2003, and in 2013 won the Prix Albert Londres for her reporting on migrants, one of the most respected journalism awards in France. Her non-fiction book «Le Silence de mon père» (2016) took the Amerigo Vespucci and Porte Dorée prizes, and her first novel «La Tour» (2022) won the Prix littéraire de l'Asie.

   «Xứ sở vô danh» is the Vietnamese edition of «Le Pays de Nulle Part» (2024): a book about a nameless country where lost children never grow up, about a baby girl who lived fifteen days, and about mothers left with empty arms. The author calls it an anti-manual on loss, a text where tragedy walks beside laughter and the private keeps touching the universal. It was translated by Thuận and published by Kim Đồng at 224 pages.

   The essentials
Guests in Huế: Dr Thái Phan Vàng Anh of the Faculty of Philology at Huế University of Education, and Dr Nguyễn Anh Dân of the same university
Format: a direct conversation between the author and the audience
Organised by Kim Đồng Publishing House and the Institut français du Vietnam

   It is aimed at readers of translated fiction, anyone following francophone writing from the Vietnamese diaspora, and anyone attempting to write about their own family history. You can put questions straight to the author, the format is built for it.

   The venue: the evening is hosted at the Institut français de Huế on Lê Hồng Phong, the central Vietnam branch of the Institut français du Vietnam and one of the two institutions behind the whole tour.

   The tour covers four cities, Hanoi, Huế, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City, with a different panel of guests in each.

   Language: the author speaks French and everything is consecutively interpreted into Vietnamese, so you can follow the conversation in either language.

   If you have ever wondered how someone else's grief turns into literature you can actually read, this is a chance to ask the person who wrote it.