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The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars Paperback – June 23, 2009

by Andrew X. Pham (Author)

4.5 269 ratings

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One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World
One of the Los Angeles Times’ Favorite Books of the Year
One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian
A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association

“Few books have combined the historical scope and the literary skill to give the foreign reader a sense of events from a Vietnamese perspective. . . . Now we can add Andrew Pham’s Eaves of Heaven to this list of indispensable books.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Searing . . . vivid–and harrowing . . . Here is war and life through the eyes of a Vietnamese everyman.”
—Seattle Times

Once wealthy landowners, Thong Van Pham’s family was shattered by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century: the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Vietnam War.
Told in dazzling chapters that alternate between events in the past and those closer to the present, The Eaves of Heaven brilliantly re-creates the trials of everyday life in Vietnam as endured by one man, from the fall of Hanoi and the collapse of French colonialism to the frenzied evacuation of Saigon. Pham offers a rare portal into a lost world as he chronicles Thong Van Pham’s heartbreaks, triumphs, and bizarre reversals of fortune, whether as a South Vietnamese soldier pinned down by enemy ﬁre, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese under brutal interrogation, or a refugee desperately trying to escape Vietnam after the last American helicopter has abandoned Saigon. This is the story of a man caught in the maelstrom of twentieth-century politics, a gripping memoir told with the urgency of a wartime dispatch by a writer of surpassing talent.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World
One of the Los Angeles Times’ Favorite Books of the Year
One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian
A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association

“The ‘I’ of the first-person narration, belonging not the author but to his father; the Edenic lushness of Thong’s childhood memories, intermingled with the wrenching dramas to come: These are the devices of sophisticated fiction, drawing us in while keeping us precariously off balance.”
—The Boston Globe

“[A] work of radiance. In some ways, it resembles that supreme recollection of a world lost to history’s depredations, Speak, Memory, in which Vladimir Nabokov summoned up his pre-revolutionary Russian boyhood. . . . [A]s with Tolstoy’s war and peace, darkness, intrinsically formless, gets shape and vividness from the light playing through it. . . . brilliantly chilling . . .”
—Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

“Thong Van Pham is constantly fleeing and rebuilding in the midst of war, watching world after world vanish, from the feudal estate of his childhood to the Hanoi of the ‘50s to the Saigon of the 70s. He and his son have done us the extraordinary service of bringing a few pieces of those worlds back again.”
—New York Times Book Review

“ . . . [A] gorgeously written book . . . [Pham] seems to have risen to a new level of quiet and powerful storytelling. . . . The Eaves of Heaven is built from a series of short vignettes -- some sweet, some horrifying -- which are not recounted in chronological sequence, but linked in a narrative that darts nimbly across time, lingering on haunting scenes of brutality and violence as well as of beauty and love. . . . It's the absence of chronology that gives Thong's story its magic and depth, and allows it to be sustained by his observations of the ephemeral and the descriptions of unforgettable characters.”
—Washington Post Book World

“[A] searing story . . . The remembered images of more tranquil, carefree times are what make the subsequent depictions of wartime terrors and devastation so heartbreaking. . . . Pham has a novelist’s eye for telling details . . .”
—Seattle Times

“There are some books that writers shouldn’t read . . . because they are so good they make you despair that you could ever write so well yourself. The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham, is such a book. Pham . . . is the best kind of memoirist. . . . He understands a memoir is not really about oneself but about a period, a time, a people. . . . As a memoir, The Eaves of Heaven accomplishes what few polemics do – it is a sweeping personal indictment of war, a reassuring and yet merciless affirmation of the human spirit.”
—Portland Oregonian

“Pham deftly paints a compelling portrait of life during three wars in Vietnam . . . This beautifully written books is essential for public and academic libraries.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“War-torn as it was, a lost world lives again in Thong’s recollections of the passions of his life: food, friends, family, romance. Personal tragedy and triumph, related with amazing perspective against an epic backdrop.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“World-shaping events that most Americans know merely through schematic maps and historical summaries take on a poignantly human immediacy in this story of one storm-buffeted man: Thong Van Pham, the author’s father. . . . By turns touching and searing, this slice of history—like Pham’s earlier Catfish and Mandala (1999)—deserves a wide readership.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Alternating between his father’s distant past and more recent events, the narrative takes readers on a haunting trip through time and space. This technique lends a soothing, dreamlike quality. . . Pham does an admirable job of recounting the complex cast of characters and the political machinations of the various groups vying for power over the years. In the end, he also gracefully delivers a heartfelt family history.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

About the Author

ANDREW X. PHAM is the award-winning author of the memoir Catﬁsh and Mandala and the translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown; Reprint edition (June 23, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307381218
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307381217
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 920L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.7 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,046,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #812 in Southeast Asia History
- #1,950 in Vietnam War History (Books)
- #30,485 in Memoirs (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 269 ratings

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Andrew X. Pham

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Andrew X. Pham trained and graduated from UCLA as an aerospace engineer. He worked at United Airlines as an aircraft engineer before switching career to become a writer while pursuing dual graduate degrees, M.B.A and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, specializing in orbital debris. His brother's suicide was the catalyst in his pivotal life changing decision.

He writes and lives on the Thai-Laos border in a traditional wooden farm bungalow he built on the Mekong River. He teaches writing and occassionally lead bicycle tours in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. He has launched a culinary project on Kickstarter.com, titled A Southeast Asian Love Affair: My Cookbook Diary of Travels, Flavors and Memories, a literary work that tells the stories of his life in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. He can be found at andrewxpham.com

He is the author of Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (1999) and The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (2009). He is also the translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace (2008).

Catfish and Mandala won the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, QPB Nonfiction Prize, and the Oregon Literature Prize. It was also a Guardian Shortlist Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discovery Book, a Border's Original Voices Selection

The Eaves of Heaven was a National Book Critic Circle Finalist and a Asian Pacific American Librarian Association Honorary Book of the Year. It was also the Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association and named as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Washington Post Book World, One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Portland Oregonian, One of the Los Angeles Times' Favorite Books of the Year, and One of the Best Books of the Year by Bookmarks Magazine

Andrew X. Pham also won a Whiting Writer Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Montalvo Fellowship.

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4.5 out of 5

269 global ratings

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Stephen Balbach

The Eves of Heaven

Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2008

Verified Purchase

`The Eves of Heaven` is an "auto-biography" by Thong Van Pham. In fact it is written by his son Andrew, but he takes on the first person voice of his father Thong, similar to the technique used by Dave Eggers in ` What Is the What? `. It is difficult to know how accurate it is, or what degree of artistic license is involved, but in a way it doesn't matter because as creative non-fiction it reads like a novel.

Not only is the story highly engrossing, thrilling and fascinating, but it is humane. Thong never seems to loose his sense of dignity and respect for life despite the horrors of violence, drugs and prostitution that stalk him. The lush prose is deliciously sensuous in one chapter, then shifts to scenes of deprivation the next, like a master chef playing the pallet between extremes of texture and temperature - and like the fusion of French and Asian culture that is Vietnam.

`The Eaves of Heaven` covers over 30 years of war in Vietnam as it transitioned from a "feudal" age to the modern world in one or two generations - the Japanese in WWII, the French and then the Americans. One mans lifetime saw it all from start to end. Through this wonderfully written, humane and moving memoir of a single life, I was better able to understand Vietnam, its people and its recent past.

8 people found this helpful

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J. Scott Shipman

Provocative Page-turner

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2008

Verified Purchase

Mr. Pham has done his father a great service. This book is something of a memoir written from the perspective of his father through the son's pen. This heart-rending story catalogues the trials, the horrors, and the injustices suffered by the average Vietnamese citizen at the hands of their political elite--on both sides Communists and Nationalists---and also provides insight into traditional family time---complete with "grasshopper" hunting and cricket fights among the children.
Mr. Pham's description of "the Elder's" moral and physical courage in the face of friends joining one movement or another or physical danger is illustrative of a courageous and dedicated spirit.
Read the book in two sittings---and was truly impressed with both the style and content.
Highly recommended---I'm going to read Catfish and Mandala soon.

4 people found this helpful

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Thad Guyer

Destined to be a 21st Century American Classic

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

This book is not about the immigrant experience. It is about the war refugee experience, which later in this century will the subject of defining the American experience as part of the search for who we are. I hope Andrew Pham is alive when the day comes in which this masterpiece is considered one of those books for which not having read it would reveal a personal deficit. In the age, just now starting, of war refugees simultaneously uniting and convulsing Western democracies, this book will be a common safe haven for the debate of who we let in and who we don't, and more importantly why.

The book is poetry and prose, the author too young to have the wisdom needed for holding the chapters together. It is his father and grandfather who have done that. This is a first person memoir of the author's father, told in a way that only a son or daughter could. This does not diminish the son, and the writing is all his own. But the ways in which he must have benefited and evolved because of his father's permission and collaboration must surely be the subject of a book in its own right.

The father's life was full and tragic, inspiring and pitiful, and exposes how indispensable courage is in pushing through the barriers of self doubt. The lessons are that privilege is ephemeral, ideology is untrustworthy, and the truest dignity comes from commitment to family at all costs, and not giving up on friendships in the darkness of deprivation and betrayal.

It would be hard to reach the heights and perennial relevance of a memoir like this if written by the war refugee himself. The story must be interpreted by an offspring raised in America. It demands contemporary language and cultural agility. It is that which makes this book, all of which is set in Vietnam, an American classic.

9 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Good writer, very interesting history, very factual.

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

After reading the bood, when I visited S.E. Asia, I could better understand the countries of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. It is amazing how happy the people seem; they persist at smiling all the time. And why after all the terrible history they were forced through ? As the book of a real life story growing up there shows, it is because very few people are left from the war eras. The Communists basically came in and either killed everyone remaining or forced them to flee under cover. So most of those left were born after the Vietnam War. They pretty much ignore the Communist government, which is why their mostly capitalist economy is thriving.
The book also gives a good perspective of why the locals have the feelings they have toward the Chinese, Japanese, French and Americans. For example, you have to remember that the Americans, although they inflicted terrible damage, were there only 20 years while the Chinese have inflicting their damage for centuries and are still at it. The Vietnamese still know that China will try to take some of their territory in the near future and wonder when it will ever stop. But overall, the people have an amazing vibrant outlook on life and are willing to share everything with those who reciprocate.

One person found this helpful

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Sartek

Truth or Fiction

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2010

Good reading, but I have to question how much of this book is fiction. Having been a pilot and sailor I know basic radio language and Mr. Pham's comment "Over and Out" when using a radio in the military, is an oxymoron straight out of Hollywood Movies! When used correctly "Over" means you are awaiting a response from the person you are communicating with. "Out" simply means end of conversation.

2 people found this helpful

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Charlene

excellent

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2024

Verified Purchase

A very moving story that reads like a rich novel but based on fact. A tragic history of Vietnam! Excellent!

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2015

Verified Purchase

Let me start by saying that I am almost exclusively a reader of fiction, so this book was a real departure for me,but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was entertaining (not really the right word given the subject matter) and educational. I was in grade school during the Viet Nam war and didn't know a lot about it or the circumstances leading up to it. I liked the author's writing style. He told the story in an entertaining manner. I will definitely be checking out his Catfish and Mandela book.

2 people found this helpful

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