{"product_id":"9780006552239_catfish-and-mandala","title":"Catfish \u0026 Mandala","description":"\u003cp\u003e‘Jack Kerouac meets “Wild Swans”.’ The Times. A voyage through Vietnam’s ghost-ridden landscape, at once a moving memoir, travelogue and compelling search for identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eVietnamese-born Andrew Pham finally returns to Saigon, not as a success showering money and gifts onto his family, but as an emotional shipwreck, desperate to find out who he really is. When his sister, a post-operative transsexual, committed suicide, Pham sold all his possessions and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert; around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds ‘nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness’. At first meant to facilitate forgetfulness, Pham’s travels turn into an unforgettable, eye-opening search for cultural identity which flashes back to his parent’s courtship in Vietnam, his father’s imprisonment by the Vietcong, and his family’s nail-bitingly narrow escape as ‘boat people’.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLucid, witty and beautifully written, ‘Catfish and Mandala’ evokes a Vietnam you can almost smell and taste, laying bare the psyche of a troubled hero whose search for home and identity becomes our own.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Andrew Pham","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46895262138517,"sku":"9780006552239","price":26.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0484\/3175\/9509\/files\/9780006552239_e376ce08-0b12-4d8a-b516-568ce630a995.jpg?v=1776888165","url":"https:\/\/harpercollins.com.au\/products\/9780006552239_catfish-and-mandala","provider":"HarperCollins AU","version":"1.0","type":"link"}