'Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
'A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story, or a detective tale?
'Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
'Andre Dao mines his family and personal stories to turnover ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, family legacy and expectations, ambition and sacrifice.
'Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten by archives and by families. As the grandson sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about- a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them as well? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?' (Publication summary)
'The genesis of Anam came just over twenty years ago, when I was fifteen and stumbled across an Amnesty International newsletter with a photo of my grandfather on the cover. Reading that newsletter, I discovered that Amnesty had adopted my grandfather, Dao Van, as a prisoner of conscience. At the time of the newsletter, my grandfather had been in prison without charge or trial for four years. It was another six years before he was released.' (Introduction)
'André Dao’s debut novel Anam (Penguin Random House) has just won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, worth A$80,000. This follows its shortlisting for this year’s Miles Franklin Award.'
'Judges praise book as ‘profoundly relevant’, with Daniel Browning, Amy Crutchfield and Will Kostakis also winning in their categories'
'Shortlists are odd things. Put two lots of judges in separate rooms with the same works and you will not come up with the same one. But it is always interesting when their choices overlap.'
'André Dao’s remarkable debut novel began as an investigation into his paternal grandfather’s ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government, from 1978, three years after the war ended.' (Introduction)
'Novel, at first glance, is the tale of the author’s grandfather. But it doubles as a meditation on remembering the past – its challenges and its anguish'
'André Dao can pinpoint the precise moment he decided he wanted to be a writer.'
'Much-lauded Praiseworthy joins works by Gregory Day, André Dao, Sanya Rushdi, Jen Craig and Hossein Asgari competing for Australia’s highest literary honour'
'Shortlists are odd things. Put two lots of judges in separate rooms with the same works and you will not come up with the same one. But it is always interesting when their choices overlap.'
'Judges praise book as ‘profoundly relevant’, with Daniel Browning, Amy Crutchfield and Will Kostakis also winning in their categories'
'André Dao’s debut novel Anam (Penguin Random House) has just won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, worth A$80,000. This follows its shortlisting for this year’s Miles Franklin Award.'
