Hanoi Ink – Reviews Strange Roots Part 3

Legal status: Strange Roots definitely has the edge here, with an official publishing license achieved through the renowned The Gioi Publishing House. Indeed getting a publishing license seems to be easier and easier to do. Basically you work with an official publisher and they check your work and secure the necessary permit, taking responsibility for the contents, and print the requested number of copies. You pay for the license fee and printing, and after that it is up to you to sell the thing and recover your initial investment before coming into the massive profits achieved by makers of chapbooks and self-published novels everywhere. (Hint: you probably won’t need an accountant.)

Once Upon A Book does score points with the detail-obsessed and DIY types: printing and binding was carried out without the benefit of official assistance, by a permanently pajama-clad chap down a small alley of Hang Bong street, using vinyl sourced from Ha Trung street (purveyors of custom made seat covers, saddle bags and pretty much all other vinyl products you could conceive of having made to order).

So there you have it. Anthologies old and new. The short story collection as time capsule, perhaps? And if so, what does it reveal? How much has changed in those 8 years for Hanoi émigrés and visiting foreigners? Hard to say, really. I think I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Here’s hoping that it won’t be another 8 years before the next one.

See you at the next Hanoi Writers’ Collective event.

Strange Roots will soon be available at the Grapevine Store.

Strange roots: Views of Hanoi – an Anthology from the Hanoi Writers’ Collective
Edited by Andrew Engelson, J. Fossenbell and Helen Kang
Thế Giới Publishers, Hanoi, 2011
88 pages