A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain

In this 1993 Pulitzer fiction winner, Vietnamese immigrants to Louisiana speak about their experiences in the old world and the new.

It seems very daring (and that is probably why this collection seems to be overlooked) that Butler decided to tell these fifteen stories from the Vietnamese viewpoint, but he's delicate, sensitive and very knowledgeable about that culture, so it works beautifully.

A few of the stories are fragments, and there's one titled "The American Couple" that approaches novella length. My favorite story is "Love", about a jealous husband with a "butterfly" wife and the extremes -- both serious and comedic -- that he will pursue to eliminate his competition.