Publisher: Underground Voices (November 21, 2014)
ISBN: 978-0-9904331-1-8
Category: Literary Fiction, Multicultural
Tour Date: November, 2014
Available in: Print & ebook, 296 Pages
From the award winning author of ‘Flesh’, “Demons advocate love‒not the compassionate love devoid of possession and sexual desire. It’s the lustful love. They tempt humans with such lust, and the moment living beings fall for it, the demons will peddle longing to take them away.”
Thus, begins the terrible journey of a twenty-year-old boy in search of the two brothers who are drifters and who raped and killed his cousin also his girl.
Set in post-war Vietnam, The Demon Who Peddled Longing brings together the damned, the unfit, the brave, who succumb by their own doing to the call of fate. Yet their desire to survive and to face life again never dies, so that when someone like the boy, who is psychologically damaged by his family tragedy, who no sooner gets his life together after being rescued by a fisherwoman than falls in love with an untouchable girl and finds his life in peril, takes his leave in the end, there is nothing left but a longing in the heart that goes with him.
The Demon Who Peddled Longing by Khanh Ha
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the second book I have read by this author, and indeed his writing did not disappoint. You can always expect a poignant story with no frills. The author always provides a realistic story with all the harshness and brutality of raw humanity. There is never a dull moment in his books.
For me, his writing style is a bit rough. That fits the stories he tells well, but sometimes the style is a bit too stark for me. That is purely and opinion. Sensitive readers will be bombarded with profanity and some intimate descriptions. I could have done without some of that, but it does fit his writing style quite well.
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I was not financially compensated, and all opinions are 100 percent mine.
Excerpt:
“Late at night she’d go bathing in the river. He’d lie awake, listening to the gentle sound of water she poured on her body, away from the lantern light, where water was chest high, cool and cloaked in blackness. When she came up, lowering her head to enter the domed cabin, she was a dark figure save the whiteness of her towel-wrapped head. He’d keep still and find sleep hard to come by in the scent of her body soap.”
“She was a teenager. Then her parents died, one after the other. She stayed with another family and every day she followed the dikes and the canals where hummingbird trees were in blossom and, with a hook-fitted bamboo rod, she’d cut their white flowers and gather them in a basket. From early morning until noon. And she sold them in the market. Then one day by a canal she met a fisherman who was a war veteran, then later a prisoner of war. He bought those white flowers from her on the day of his mother’s anniversary of death. He asked her to bring him fresh flowers every day, and she asked who else he needed to pay respects to. He said no one. One day he asked her to come on his boat and he cooked her a meal and it was on his boat that she saw all the flowers he’d bought lying wilted in a heap at the foot of his plank bed. She could smell their bad odors during the meal. Later she left the family who had taken her in and lived on the boat with the man.”
About Khanh Ha:
Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh (2012,Black Heron Press). He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and the recipient of Greensboro Review’s 2014 Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction. His work has appeared or is forthcoming inWaccamaw Journal, storySouth, Greensboro Review, The Long Story,Permafrost Magazine, Saint Ann’s Review, Moon City Review, Red Savina Review, DUCTS, ARDOR, Lunch Ticket, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Tayo Literary Magazine, Sugar Mule, Yellow Medicine Review, Printer’s Devil Review, Mount Hope, Thrice Fiction, Lalitamba Journal, and other fine magazines.
Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/authorkhanhha
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3059216.Khanh_Ha
Book on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23163554-the-demon-who-peddled-longing
Buy‘The Demon Who Peddled Longing’:
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4 Comments
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ilike to read and blog
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Thank you, Ruth, for the review and I hope readers will like the book much as you did.
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Thanks for taking part in the tour. I’m glad you found ‘The Demon Who Peddled Longing” poignant.
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