The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester - by Khanh Ha

About the Book

"Centering on a Vietnamese intelligence officer's years-long ordeal in communist reeducation camps, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester offers a heartrending and an illuminating look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath. War, literature, religion, politics, loyalty-they are all expertly interrogated through the protagonist's compelling voice and the memorable cast of characters he encounters. Despite the struggle and suffering, the story never veers into the sentimental or cynical. Instead, it returns again and again to the complexities of the human heart and its will to endure. This is not a novel of ism excoriation; it is, in fact, a story that seeks questions to the truths of life and asks the question: "How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?" A moving, unforgettable, and enlightening must-read"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester is a haunting portrait of endurance and exile in the wake of the Vietnam War.

When a former intelligence officer is imprisoned in a communist reeducation camp, he must navigate years of forced labor, betrayal, and solitude. His attempts to escape lead only to deeper loss, and by the time he is released, his family has long fled to America, leaving him to confront the ruins of a life he no longer recognizes. At once brutal and poetic, this novel illuminates the quiet resilience of the human spirit and asks what remains when everything else has been stripped away.

Review Quotes

"Khanh Ha's new novel, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester, is a tale of postwar Vietnamese labor camps that is both utterly harrowing and utterly necessary in these current parlous times. Through Ha's arresting prose, we inhabit an inmate whose experience of great cruelty speaks not only of the past but resonates into the enduring dark complexities of the human soul. This is an important book from an important writer."
--Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

"Ha is a writer of rare talent able to plumb the depth of the human heart in the smooth rhythm of a meandering river. For Ha, the setting plays the part of an ever-present character dictating the tone and mood of the stories. Ha's work always put me in mind of Faulker in that it has a mythic quality that only the best writers are able to capture. At the same time, it is--at times brutally--realistic."
--John Gist, author of The Yewberry Way: Book I Prayer, Lizard Dreaming of Birds, and CrowHeart

About the Author

Award-winning author Khanh Ha is a ten-time Pushcart nominee. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize, The Orison Anthology Award, The James Knudsen Prize, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, The Red Hen Press Fiction Award, The Unleash Creatives Fiction Prize, and The Next Generation INDIE Book Award. Ha was born in Vietnam and is now living in New Jersey.