The Dragon Hunt : Five Stories by Tran Vu, translated by Nina McPherson and Phan Huy Duong (Hyperion]

The Dragon Hunt Is a collection of five short stories, some of which are based upon the life of writer Tran Vu. The stories were translated from the Vietnamese language by Nina McPherson and Phan Huy Duong. A couple of the stories have previously been published in other periodicals. 

The lead story, “The Coral Reef” was first published in Granta: Fifty in the summer of 1995. The second story in the collection - “Gunboat on the Yangtze” is a slightly altered translation that first appeared in the anthology Night, Again : Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam which was published by Seven Stories Press in 1996. 

“The Coral Reef” is about a boat full of refugees that runs aground on a coral reef. The crew and passengers do their best to free the boat from the reef but their efforts seem to be in vain. After the first day of being stranded, there are already changes in the people as they scramble to find food and provisions from the wreckage and think only of their own survival. 

“The Coral Reef” was based on an incident in Tran Vu’s life. Tran was born in Saigon in 1962. When he was sixteen, he and his older brother fled Vietnam on a boat. The war was over but the siblings didn’t feel safe with the communist government. Their boat, filled with four hundred passengers, shipwrecked on a coral reef. 

Tran escaped through a porthole and survived in the ocean for ten days, thanks to the life jacket that was given to him by his mother, who stayed in Vietnam. He was a refugee in the Philippines until he was granted asylum in France where he currently lives. 

“Gunboat on the Yangtze” is a disturbing story about a disfigured boy named Toan, and his elder sister who currently live in a small house in Paris. The boy suffers from extreme loneliness so his sister promises to find him a girlfriend. Once elder sister’s friend sees little brother’s face, she screams and storms out of the house yelling for help. Even after leaving the house, “her ghoulish scream haunted the corridor for a long time”. 

Elder sister gives in to her brother’s demand about being loved and they start an incestuous relationship. Things get a bit more complicated when Toan says he wants to have a child of his own. What happens between them defies the imagination.

“Hoi An” is the setting for a love triangle between a married woman, a servant girl, and the man who lives in the same house with the married woman, although in a different rented room. Hoi An is a small forgotten town in central Vietnam. The married woman’s husband is an archeologist and has moved his family to Hoi An to continue his research into the Cham and Sa Huynh people. The husband seems to be oblivious of his wife’s actions which makes her bold and dangerous at the same time. 

“Nha Nam” is a story where Vu mimics the style of a well-known Vietnamese writer named Nguyen Huy Thiep. Vu’s story was inspired by Thiep’s “Nha Nam Rain”, but Vu points out that the two stories have nothing in common besides their titles. Vu says that “Nha Nam” translates to “Delicate South” and is both ancient Vietnam and the Vietnam of today.

The final story which the book takes its name from is about a group of Vietnamese exiles who gather together in a European nation to kill dragons and eat their flesh. Even after reading Vu’s notes in which he mentions “The Dragon Hunt” is a metaphor for the divide between North and South of Vietnam, not in the sense of a nation, but as a people. It’s the difference between those who remained in the country and those who left. 

This book is a good introduction to contemporary Vietnamese fiction. Vu’s own experiences add to the realism of his stories. Although a very short book, it will impress you enough to want more. ~Ernie Hoyt