Anna Moi was born in Saigon,
the then capital of the Republic in the southern part of war-stricken
Vietnam, in 1955. »I feared the war throughout my childhood«, remembers
the daughter of a liberal educator and an officer and journalist. She
was educated early on in French schools and after leaving high school
at the Lycée Marie Curie moved to France. She started studying History
at the University of Nanterre, aiming at becoming a journalist, but
soon migrated towards the fashion industry. She then worked as a
fashion designer in Paris and Bangkok and lived for some time in Tokyo.
She speaks many languages including Vietnamese, French, Englisch, Thai,
Japanese and some German. In 1992 she moved back to her home city, now
called Ho Chi Minh City.
Here she began to write in French, her »second mother tongue«, and
initially published two slim volumes of short stories presenting scenes
from everyday life, penned with humour and discretion. In »L'écho des
rizières« (2001; t: The echo of the paddy fields), the author abruptly
combines impressions of Western and Eastern culture from different
temporal planes. She writes with as much ease of the Vietnamese
plateaus as of a swimming pool in the south-east of France, an ordinary
apartment block in downtown Ho Chi Minh City and the island paradise
Phu Quoc. Following her second volume, »Parfum de pagode« (2003; t:
Pagoda Perfume), Moi turned to the novel and her work shifted both in
theme and key. »Riz noir« (2004; t: Black Rice) focuses on the sore
afflictions of the country's past and describes the fate of two young
sisters who were arrested, tortured and interned by South Vietnamese
forces. The author intended the work, based on a true incident, also to
be understood as a homage to »the fragile and invincible« Vietnamese
women. Her second novel, »Rapaces« (2004; t: Birds of Prey), takes
place during the period of French colonial rule and evokes important
moments in the country's history, such as the great famine of the
winter of 1944/45. The protagonist is a sculptor who becomes involved
unwillingly and against his unheroic disposition with the incipient
struggle against French colonial powers, and is unable to shake off his
feelings of guilt. Moi's latest novel, »Violon« (2006; t: The Violin)
appeared recently, telling the story of a young woman who suffers from
dyslexia and grows up in a family dominated by women.
The author was awarded the prize for the best French-language début
novel at the »Festival du premier roman« in Cuneo. In 2006 she was
named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres »for her creations in the
artistic and literary field and for her contribution to the
dissemination of arts and sciences in France and the world«. Moi lives
in her native city, where she occasionally performs as a singer, and
runs a boutique that sells her designs which are exported as far as to
the USA and Japan.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
L'écho des rizières
Ed. de l'aube
La Tour d'Aigues, 2002
Parfum de pagode
Ed. de l'aube
La Tour d'Aigues, 2003
Riz noir
Gallimard
Paris, 2004
Rapaces
Gallimard
Paris, 2005
Espéranto, desespéranto
Gallimard
Paris, 2006
Violon
Flammarion
Paris, 2006
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