A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain

A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain is Robert Olen Butler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of lyrical and poignant stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its enduring impact on the Vietnamese. Written in soaring prose, Butler’s haunting and powerful stories blend Vietnamese folklore and contemporary American realities, creating a vibrant panorama that is epic in its scope. This new edition includes two previously uncollected stories—“Missing” and “Salem”—that brilliantly complete the collection’s narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam to explore the experiences of a former Vietcong soldier and an American MIA. 

“Deeply affecting . . . A brilliant collection of stories about storytellers whose recited folklore radiates as implicit prayer . . . One of the strongest collections I’ve read in ages.”  —  Ann Beattie

"Butler writes essentially, and in a bewitching translation of voice and sympathy, what it means to lose a country, to remember it, and to have the memory begin to grow old. He writes as if it were his loss, too."  -  Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review