Jeanne Pham Tran's Novel 'Les ombres de l'exil' Bridges Generations and Cultures

French-Vietnamese writer Jeanne Pham Tran, born in 1986 and currently residing in Thailand, has published her second novel, 'Les ombres de l'exil' (The Shadows of Exile), with Mercure de France. The book is a fictionalized account of her grandmother Ama's life, intertwining their stories across continents and generations. Ama, who grew up in China's rice fields and served the last emperor of Annam in French Indochina before moving to France, had always wished to write her story. Tran fulfills this wish through the novel, which explores themes of exile, memory, trauma, and identity. The narrative is set against the backdrop of Vitry-sur-Seine, where Tran interviews her grandmother, and spans locations from China to Vietnam to France. The novel follows Tran's debut, 'De rage et de lumière' (2023), and is described as a quest for origins, examining the erased traces of a French and Sino-Vietnamese family. The publisher's presentation highlights Tran's vivid, poignant, and poetic language, aiming to repair the broken thread of transmission with modesty and tenderness. The novel also touches on the cultural and linguistic gaps between the two women, yet underscores their shared love of literature. The book was featured on RFI's 'Littérature sans frontières' podcast on September 4, 2026, with musical illustration by Thanh Huong and Nguyen Lê.