Description

Do you ever know the other?
The father of Doan, a young woman brought up in France by Vietnamese parents, suffers a stroke and can no longer speak: he now lives in silence, only able to utter "O" and "A" sounds. Then the young woman Doan realizes that she actually knows nothing about him, about his past, about his origins. It's too late now to get answers to their questions.

This is fateful irony: she, who asks questions by profession because she is a journalist, she who has interviewed migrants from all over the world, never questioned her own father. She knows nothing or has never researched the history of her family, who left Vietnam as exiles.
That's the rule in her family – people keep quiet.

Translated from the French by Dr. Phillip Wellnitz.

Reviews and press:

Headlights:

Doan has been asking questions her entire life. She preferably dealt with migrants who, after fleeing, are starting a new life in France. The journalist with Vietnamese roots only realizes how exciting and important it is to know one's own background when her father suffers a stroke and he is speechless. A new investigation begins for Doan, but now everything revolves around her own life, her past and the question of her own belonging. Because the journalist doesn't really feel French, nor does she see herself as Vietnamese... more

Rouven Hans:

Monsieur Bui suffers a stroke and, as the head of the family, is henceforth tied to his chair, speechless. At 19 he came to France from Vietnam and pursued a career as a doctor in Paris. Doan Bui, one of his four daughters, soon finds out that although she has made a name for herself as a journalist with reports on refugees, she knows very little about the history of her own father. more

The new observer:

A beautiful story, often funny, always deeply touching. (Un beau récit, souvent drôle, toujours bouleversant.)

Elisabeth Arend, global ° Festival 2016:

Quietly and completely unpathetically told, the result is a filigree text that captivates through precise observation and always remains discreet. Without strictly chronological organization, he follows the impulses that come from the present of the narrator and lead back to the past in a more associative manner. No epic structure emerges, but a tentative approach to the past. The presence of the first-person narrator also becomes tangible, a journalist who has become famous through interviews and articles about migrants and people living in exile.