Acknowledgments

It was a pleasure to revisit many of the thinkers who have influenced me over the years, or to whom I wanted to respond. These are the authors and works that I have discussed, drawn from, or quoted in the text: Theodor Adorno, “Commitment,” in Aesthetics and Politics; Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays; Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex; Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings; Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism and A Tempest, which I saw long ago in an unforgettable theatrical production in Berkeley; Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”; Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness; Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks; Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks; Che Guevara, On Vietnam and World Revolution; Ho Chi Minh, The Case Against French Colonization; Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection; Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, whose words I give to Blood Brother #1 when he says, “the birth of a being that must proceed from nothingness, absolute beginning, is an event historically absurd”; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions; Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, and his introduction to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth; and Voltaire, whose Candide I first read and was greatly amused by as a boy.

Among the texts that helped me imagine Paris of the early 1980s, oriented around the world of Vietnamese immigrants, refugees, and their French descendants, I am indebted to Gisele Bousquet’s invaluable Behind the Bamboo Hedge: The Impact of Homeland Politics in the Parisian Vietnamese Community, as well as the images in Le Paris Asie: 150 ans de présence asiatique dans la capitale, edited by Pascal Blanchard and Éric Deroo. Also useful in understanding and visualizing France’s relationship to its colonized populations were the essays and images in Sexe, race & colonies: La domination des corps du XVe siècle à nos jours, edited by Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles Boetsch, Dominic Thomas, and Christelle Taraud. For the history of French and CIA involvement in the production and selling of Southeast Asian opium, I relied on Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.

Several people in Paris or with connections to France were generous with their time in talking to me, including Hoai Huong Aubert-Nguyen, Doan Bui, Myriam Dao, Anna Moï, Nguyen Nhat Cuong, Liem Binh Luong Nguyen, Abdellah Taïa, and Quoc Dang Tran. Duc Ha Duong helped secure permission from the Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France for my use of the photo of the three masked men. I am also grateful to Chiori Miyagawa, Jordan Elgrably, Huê-Tâm Webb Jamme, and Laila Lalami for having read the novel in draft form and responding to my questions about the novel and French life and attitudes. In the United States, a visit to an exotic Asian-themed restaurant with food critic Soleil Ho helped me to imagine the bar Opium. I am also appreciative of the work of my graduate research assistants, Rebekah Park and Jenny Hoang, as well as my undergraduate assistants, Yvette Chua, Ivy Hong, Nina Ibrahim, Sunjay Lee, Morgan Milender, Christine Nguyen, Tommy Nguyen, and Jordan Trinh. They helped give me time to focus on the novel, while Nancy Tan’s copyediting, and additional proofreads by Kait Astrella and Alicia Burns, helped me polish the manuscript. Any mistakes I have made in this book are of course my own.

The MacArthur and Guggenheim Foundations provided fellowships that helped greatly in the writing of this book, as did the research support of the University of Southern California and its Dornsife College. My agents Nat Sobel and Judith Weber have been stalwart advisors, and the staff at Sobel Weber Associates have made my life easier, including Kristen Pini and Adia Wright. I am also fortunate to be an author with Grove Atlantic, which has been an ideal home, particularly with Morgan Entrekin’s leadership, Peter Blackstock’s superlative editorial guidance, and the support of Deb Seager, John Mark Boling, Judy ­Hottensen, Elisabeth Schmitz, and Emily Burns.

Finally, as always, my deep love and commitment to Lan Duong and our children, Ellison and Simone.