HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha: On Tour
Publisher: Gival Press, (October 1, 2023)
Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024
ISBN: 978-1940724454
Available in Print and ebook, 280 pages
Description HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.
The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.
Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.
Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.
HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.
Review HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
What an incredible novel and one that I know I will be thinking about for a long time to come! 'Her: The Flame Tree,' is a story of love, loss and generational trauma from Vietnamese author Khanh Ha.
This book completely took me off guard with the beauty of its prose. I found myself so moved by the story that I even teared up at some points. The story itself is about three different characters, Phuong, Minh and Phuong's adopted father Canh. Within three different timelines, each character's story is told and the joys and tragedies of their lives laid bare for the reader.
I found myself especially moved by Canh's story. The Imperial eunuch who falls in love with the emperor's concubine, but, of course, their love is doomed to be forbidden from the start. Later, Canh adopts Phuong and raises her and it is his love and teachings that steer her through her darkest times. I found that representation of fatherly love to be incredibly beautiful and so touching to read about.
Of course, I wouldn't want to tell you too much in this review and spoil the entire story, it is well worth the read!
Ha's writing is sublime and his grasp of what makes prose really shine is unparalleled. My heart was taken by 'Her: The Flame Tree,' from the very first page and I think it still has possession of it even now. A gorgeous novel, and an amazingly talented author, if you think that I'm praising this novel too much, pick it up and see for yourself!
Interview with Khanh Ha
Suzie: Please tell us something about HER: The Flame Tree that is not in the summary. (About the book, characters you particularly enjoyed writing, etc.)
Khanh: A novel about unrequited love, it tells the story of Jonathan Edward, who lost the love of his life who was his Vietnamese French tutor at a Vietnamese-language school in Washington, D.C. The State Department sent him to Vietnam in 1968. It’s the story of Bo, a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, whose life spans the two centuries and who has lived to witness many untold things that make one grow wise and mute. He raised Phuong since she was a baby. Both father and daughter have survived many devastating floods and yet their house still stands with time when one day Jonathan Edward comes into their lives. In the end, in seeking a life that’s faraway from home and completely foreign to him, Jonathan Edward becomes steeped in a wisdom that comes of belief in human goodness in return for innocence lost. Together they recreate an old world once lived in by emperors and queens and concubines, and together they enact a magic that holds them captive in their own world – a world fostered with kinship, romance and love.
I enjoyed developing all the characters; however, Phượng and her father, the former grand eunuch, were two characters who fascinated me.
Suzie: When did you first have a desire to write? How did this desire manifest itself?
Khanh: I wrote and had my first short stories in Vietnamese published when I was fourteen. But I was in love with the written words when I was much younger, perhaps between eight and nine, making up stories in chapbooks along the way.
Suzie: How completely do you develop you characters before beginning to write?
Khanh: With literary fiction, you deal with characters more than with plots. You deal with spontaNEity and dynamics of characterization which shapes the story line. You don’t shoehorn your characters into a predetermined plot. Depth of characterization is the heart of literary fiction in addition to the mood, the atmosphere, the ambience, the prose. Truthfully speaking, I do not know much about my characters until I write the first draft. Yet the writing itself causes a chemical reaction among my characters. By writing I mean the author begins exploring his fictional world inhabited by characters whom he has created in name only, until he interacts with them. He might care for one character more than others. But undeniably to all of them he is omniscient. He exists in all of them. Conversely, they all exist in him.
It’s a must that you know your characters well—if literary fiction is what you write. Your savvy of life and knowledge of people is the essence of conceiving a well developed character. Likely if I conceive a character well, his name will come automatically. The story will stall if a character is badly conceived. That make-believe world represented by my characters must be real to me, and I must believe in it to be its creator.
Suzie: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself?
Khanh: No, Gival Press has its own artist who designs all the covers for its published books.
Suzie: How does a eunuch come to adopt a daughter? Was that allowed in Vietnam?
Khanh: Yes, it’s not prohibitive if one wishes to adopt a child in Vietnam, be it a commoner or, in this particular case, a eunuch. In the novel, the former grand eunuch, out of his love for the high-ranking concubine he served, vowed to raise her twin daughters. He kept his promise to the concubine never to reveal her damaged identity to her daughters. Years later Phượng asked him who her blood parents were and he lied to her. “Phượng, when I left the imperial palace I wanted to have a child, so I went to an orphanage in Huế and found you among newborn babies. I don’t know anything about your parents other than their nationality. But I am your father.”
Suzie: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?
Khanh: No writer or author can inspire you to write. The writing desire must exist in you even before you are aware of it. It might demand to be heard before your maturity has arrived. But I believe that writers have influence on one another. Influence, not inspiration. Maybe someday what I wrote might bear some influence on some aspiring writers. But influences change with a writer’s age. For me there were two books I read at the age of nine: Pinocchio and The Count of Monte Cristo. I always trust my childhood memory, and for many years it hasn’t erased the vivid images from those books—of very real characters, of human nature, of human twists of fate. As a teen I read The Izu Dancer by Yasunari Kawabata, Rain by Somerset Maugham, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway. They haunt like a good long book. I read The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner and found myself envying him. All these have influenced me.
Suzie: What do you do when you are not writing?
Khanh: We would find places we want to see and visit them. But the best moments always are those you share with your loved ones. Just get together and enjoy each other’s company.
Suzie: What are you currently working on?
Khanh: It’s a novel based loosely on a Communist spy journalist during the Vietnam war. I only use him as a sketch and my main character evolves to become someone much different in personality and ideology from the figure I draw my ideas from.
About Khanh Ha
Blog: http://authorkhanhha.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha
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Giveaway- HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
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Thanks so much for hosting Khanh! I am so glad that you enjoyed 'HER: The Flame Tree' so much!
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