Justin is a nine-year-old boy who finds himself lost in another realm. There he meets four power animals, Serpent, Jaguar, Hummingbird, and Eagle. He soon discovers that he needs to find Luminous Mountain, where he can be reunited with his mother. Together with his new friends, Justin begins his journey. Many lessons are revealed along the way by each power animal sharing with him their wisdom and gifts. When Justin learns to practice compassion, he becomes one with all of creation. Through this adventure, he finds Luminous Mountain and the true meaning of his lifes journey and he realizes that "You are Never Alone".
The International Bestseller New York Times Editors’ Choice SelectionWinner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship "[An] absorbing, stirring novel . . . that, in more than one sense, remedies history." —The New York Times Book Review “A triumph, a novelistic rendition of one of the most difficult times in Vietnamese history . . . Vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.” —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel in English.
“One of the most amusing and poignant anti-heroes since Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum” lives up to his misfit heritage in this ribald debut (Spike Magazine). Ask Rovar Ákos Pfliegman about himself and he’ll say: “I have no life. I have no known relatives, no known friends. I’m barely human. I’m a hairy little Hungarian pulp. I am a sorry gathering of organs. That is all.” But there is more to Rovar than meets the eye. He has a pet beetle named Mrs. Kipner, he is a butcher plagued by rare ailments, he sells meat out of a broken-down bus next to a river in suburban Virginia, and he is the last of the Pfliegman line, a not-too-bright pagan clan that reaches back to pre-medieval Hungary. He also believes he’ll fulfill the ignoble destiny of inbred self-destruction that has wiped out all Pfliegmans before him. But against all odds, and the cruel laws of nature, this unlikely loner, seller of fresh mutton at unbeatable prices, unloved lover, and historian of the unimportant is still capable of being reborn in the most extraordinary way. “Innocent and wise, grave and hilarious, bleak and hopeful, fast-paced and meditative, heartbreaking and heart healthy, evanescent and concrete” (Heidi Julavits), The Convalescent “nods to all sorts of greats—Kafka, Rushdie, Darwin and Grass, to name a few. But Anthony’s style—funny, immediate and unapologetically cerebral—carves out a space all its own” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
