The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester

"The narrative is infused with cultural and political insights that explore the factors that shape freedom and the lack thereof...Brother Khang’s story vividly conveys a profound sense of alienation born of a personal identity split by war. A compelling addition to the literature of the Vietnam War."

—Kirkus Review (starred review)

“Khanh Ha’s new novel, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester, is a tale of postwar Vietnamese labor camps that is both utterly harrowing and utterly necessary in these current parlous times. Through Ha’s arresting prose, we inhabit an inmate whose experience of great cruelty speaks not only of the past but resonates into the enduring dark complexities of the human soul. This is an important book from an important writer.”

—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

“Ha is a writer of rare talent able to plumb the depth of the human heart in the smooth rhythm of a meandering river. For Ha, the setting plays the part of an ever-present character dictating the tone and mood of the stories. Ha’s work always put me in mind of Faulker in that it has a mythic quality that only the best writers are able to capture. At the same time, it is—at times brutally—realistic.”
—John Gist, author of The Yewberry Way: Book I Prayer, Lizard Dreaming of Birds, and CrowHeart