Slander (European Women Writers)

Lê, Linda

Literature & Fiction

University Of Nebraska Press

Like author Linda Lê, the young woman who narrates this novel is from Vietnam and is a writer, a “dirty foreigner writing in French.” The narrator has distanced herself not only from Vietnamese society but also from her family. Her story is an exercise in clear-eyed fury revealing three generations of a cursed family. The grandfather was a lunatic the family locked away and declared dead to avoid shame; the father is a failed artist and humiliated cuckold; the mother is a simpering beauty consumed with lust; the uncle is declared insane because of his incestuous love for his sister, who hanged herself. The narrator, on the verge of a profound depression ever since her mother told her she was illegitimate, alternates her story with her uncle’s journal. In an acid style burning with compressed lyricism and savage irony, these parallel monologues sketch misfortune’s family tree. 
Linda Lê, who traveled at age fourteen from Saigon to France with a wave of “boat people,” is one of the leading young novelists on France’s brave new literary scene. Slander is Lê’s fifth—and most celebrated—novel.

Contemporary

An intensely lively and piquant novel about a Vietnamese family, The Three Fates concerns rivalries and jealousies, strange motives and destructive passions. The three fates―now three Vietnamese “princesses” in France―were spirited away as little children by their powerful grandmother when Saigon fell to the communists. Now the two sisters and their cousin await the arrival of their father and uncle, still marooned in his little blue house in the old country. “Leave King Lear alone, I’d told my cousins,” our principal narrator (an intellectual who has lost a hand) informs us: “They had neglected him for twenty years and now they were conspiring like a pair of Cordelias to bestow one last joy on the old monarch: he hadn’t asked for it.” From a luxurious home in the French countryside, his two daughters (the elder, very pregnant and restlessly cooking and eating, kept company by her long-legged and icy younger sister) plot to drag their father halfway around the world – away from his poverty and from his only friend and the grilled eels they happily devour together – to flaunt their success. Scathingly unsentimental, The Three Fates transposes Shakespearean tragedy into a contemporary idiom and a decidedly different culture. A sharply vivacious book about “the bitch of fate,” The Three Fates―like a witches’ pot on the boil―brews up from displaced lives a darkly funny and agitated concatenation.

The Three Fates

Literary

New Directions

Asian culinary culture is one that is founded on the balance of flavors, well-being, refinement, and artful presentation peppered with a flamboyant history of migration.  The exotic flavors of ginger, lemongrass, chile, cilantro, tamarind, mango, apaya, coconut, and lime are at the heart of this vibrant and creative cuisine which surprises and delights with every bite. (Linda Le)

My Asian Kitchen

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Regional & International

New Holland Publishers

Je ne répondrai plus jamais de rien

Stock

De personne je ne fus le contemporain

Quinze ans que nous nous sommes perdus de vue. J'avais tout bonnement oublié son existence. Les nièces fininssent toujours par se rappeler à vous. Gamines, elles vous montrenht leurs cuisses nues et leur dent de travers, elles laissent dans leur sillage une odeur de vice mal éclos. Quand elles sont en âge de séduire, elles vous oublient, mais à la première crise, elles viennent vous demander de légitimer leur existence. Elles font appel à l'oncle comme une diva fait appel à son plus vieil admirateur. Parler de soi sans intention calomnieuse? Autant cracher dans un puits vide. Ici, on abuse de sentimentalité, mais les baisers sont à l'arsenic. Ici, on ne respecte que le protocole du dégoût, on ne joue qu'à l'ombre du mancenillier, car aller à la recherche de ses origines, c'est commencer une entreprise de démolition.

Calomnies

BOURGOIS

Les dits d'un idiot

Genre Fiction

in8. Broché. Elles sont trois, réunies un dimanche après-midi dans une cuisine pleine d'odeurs alléchantes. Elles sont trois, comme les filles du roi Lear. Comme les trois régions du Vietnam. Comme les trois Parques qui dévident, nouent, tranchent le fil de la destinée. Elles sont trois, comme les Tristesses penchées sur le lit de Thomas de Quincey: la plus âgée, la Madone des Larmes, porte à la ceinture des clefs avec lesquelles elle ouvre toutes les maisons, pénètre dans les chambres, où elle divague, gémit, tempête contre le Ciel, réclame d'être aimée; la seconde, la Soeur des Soupirs, ne se révolte plus -elle a jeté ses clefs, elle visite les parias et les vagabonds, elle se glisse auprès d'eux, les yeux baissés, la plus jeune soeur, elle, pose sur le monde un regard de tigre, elle n'a pas de clef -quand il lui est permis d'approcher une porte, elle s'en empare d'assaut et l'enfonce. La première nourrit de larmes l'inconsolé, la seconde donne le baiser au proscrit, que la troisième reçoit contre son sein pour le perdre à jamais.

Les trois Parques

Lettre morte

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lê, Linda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lê, Linda