The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester

A Novel

By: Khanh Ha

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Hardcover | 12 May 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover
266 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.91

Hardcover

RRP $57.19

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A haunting, lyrical reckoning with war's aftermath, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester confronts the brutality of Vietnam's reeducation camps while illuminating the enduring power of memory, loyalty, and the human will to survive.

Centering on a Vietnamese intelligence officer's years-long ordeal in communist reeducation camps, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester offers a heartrending and an illuminating look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath. War, literature, religion, politics, loyalty-they are all expertly interrogated through the protagonist's compelling voice and the memorable cast of characters he encounters. Despite the struggle and suffering, the story never veers into the sentimental or cynical. Instead, it returns again and again to the complexities of the human heart and its will to endure. This is not a novel of ism excoriation; it is, in fact, a story that seeks questions to the truths of life and asks the question: "How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?" A moving, unforgettable, and enlightening must-read.

Industry Reviews

“Khanh Ha’s new novel, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester, is a tale of postwar Vietnamese labor camps that is both utterly harrowing and utterly necessary in these current parlous times. Through Ha’s arresting prose, we inhabit an inmate whose experience of great cruelty speaks not only of the past but resonates into the enduring dark complexities of the human soul. This is an important book from an important writer.”
—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

“Ha is a writer of rare talent able to plumb the depth of the human heart in the smooth rhythm of a meandering river. For Ha, the setting plays the part of an ever-present character dictating the tone and mood of the stories. Ha’s work always put me in mind of Faulker in that it has a mythic quality that only the best writers are able to capture. At the same time, it is—at times brutally—realistic.”
—John Gist, author of The Yewberry Way: Book I Prayer, Lizard Dreaming of Birds, and CrowHeart

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