Lotusland
Description
Lotusland is the debut novel by David Joiner and one of the only works of fiction by a US author to bridge the literary gap between the Vietnam War and contemporary Vietnam.
Nathan Monroe is a 28-year-old American living in Saigon who falls in love with a talented and ambitious Vietnamese painter. When he faces crises of love and his own ambitions, his safety net appears in the form of Anthony, an old domineering friend in Hanoi who runs a successful real estate firm. Only much later does Nathan discover that Anthony has plans for him which clash with his desire to integrate into Vietnamese life. Little do they know what lies in store for them after Anthony recklessly takes both of their futures into his own hands.
With lyrical prose and an eye on the social dynamics of a culture undergoing great change, Lotusland dramatizes the power imbalances between Westerners living abroad, and between Westerners and Vietnamese - in love and friendship, in the consequences of war, and in the pursuit of dreams.
Product Details
| Publisher | Painted Veil Press |
| Publish Date | March 01, 2025 |
| Pages | 340 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780997715507 |
| Dimensions | 8.3 X 5.5 X 0.8 inches | 0.8 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"Tender, brutal, authentic, Lotusland captures the romance, disenchantment, and discoveries of expats living high and low in Vietnam. Joiner weaves a fine story."
- Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala and Eaves of Heaven, and translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
"Lotusland transports readers far away from narratives about the Vietnam War. David Joiner takes Vietnam as many people have come to know it and shows what it's like today. A wonderful, important debut."
- Le Ly Hayslip, author of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace
"In Lotusland, American expatriate Nathan Monroe - unlike Fowler, the central character in Graham Greene's The Quiet American - speaks Vietnamese and the Vietnamese people he knows are not projected symbols of what Việt Nam represents to the West, but are complex human beings living in complex relationships with their culture and each other. Nathan's experience of Việt Nam, with all its beauty and contradictions as it moves away from the damage and sacrifice of war into the tension between traditional values and global consumerism, is nuanced and layered. To cut through tired assumptions and preconceptions about a place and discover it through fresh eyes and an informed consciousness can be the real gift of expatriate novels: it is a gift David Joiner beautifully presents in Lotusland."
- Wayne Karlin, author of Memorial Days: Việt Nam Stories 1973-2022 and Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Việt Nam
"Many novels explore the experience of travel, but few capture so beautifully the complex mingling of wonder and loneliness that comes with living far from home. David Joiner has done that in Lotusland, a moving story of a difficult friendship between two Americans in Vietnam. Through the lens of that friendship, he's given us a dynamic, deeply nuanced portrait of a nation in the midst of profound change."
- Dana Sachs, author of The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam
"An engaging and accomplished novel about contemporary Vietnam seen through the eyes of an American who lived there."
- John Balaban, author of Remembering Heaven's Face, a memoir, and Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương
"A rare, vividly rendered depiction of near-contemporary Vietnam full of details noticed by someone who lived in - and cares deeply about - the country. In Lotusland, David Joiner explores both Vietnam and personal relationships with welcome realism."
- Michael Tatarski, editor of the Vietnam Weekly and host of the Vietnam Weekly Podcast
"Likely the most vivid novel set in post-colonial Southeast Asia that contemporary readers will encounter."
- Garry Craig Powell, Rain Taxi
"An authentic account of expats struggling with love, money and trust in the realities of Vietnamese culture...[S]erves as an antidote to the conveyor belt of tired fiction about a war that ended more than 40 years ago."
- Oi Vietnam Magazine
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