The Mountains Sing

Nguyen Phan Que Mai gives us a century of Vietnamese history from the inside, told through two women whose voices are shaped by the poet she is — the prose is precise and lyrical without being showy, and the alternating timelines reward the attention they demand. The content is heavy, including rape and torture, but handled with the gravity the history deserves rather than for shock. One of the most important literary debuts of the past decade and a book that changes how you see a war most readers only know from one side.