Winner of the PEN Translates Award 2024

After an eight-year hiatus, Nguyễn Ngọc Tư returns with her second novel. Mesmerizing, poignant, lyrical, and existential, yet claustrophobic, Water: A Chronicle encapsulates the beauty of contemporary Vietnamese writing.

At the heart of this watery chronicle is a dual mystery: a holy man on an island empire and a desperate mother seeking his heart to cure her child. This mosaic novel, composed of nine stories, circles this enigma like river currents, carrying fragments of myth and life from the great river.

A trans woman who longs to be whole, a shadow bride yearning for flesh, a madwoman with a colicky infant, and a woman who eats words to protect her child from a fly apocalypse... The ghosts and ghouls reflecting on the water's surface may be the everyday reality of river life—or the universal haunting of womanhood.

'In this swirling quasi-novel, saturated with insatiable quests of all varieties, everyone is engaged in endless seeking.' —Alex Tan, Asymptote

'...a triumph of lyrical storytelling...' —Nghiem Tran, author of We're Safe When We're Alone

'Nguyễn Ngọc Tư[...]paints a complex and atmospheric portrait of the overlooked miseries of the often beautified Mekong Delta [...], to partake in the rare moments of hope and resilience, which carry in themselves a somber kind of beauty.'​—Thảo Tô, Asian Review of Books

'...a grimey, watery tale of the always-unexpected, of rough surrounds lending themselves to all kinds of fervor.' —Khairani Barokka, author of amuk