A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Written in a 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.Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.“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“Remarkable . . . for how beautifully it achieves its daring project of making the Vietnamese real.” The New York Times Book Review“Butler’s achievement is not only to reveal the inner lives of the Vietnamese, but to show, through their eyes, how the rest of us appear from an outside perspective.” Madison Smart Bell, Chicago Tribune