Congaï : Mistress of Indochine

Hervey opened the door to the way we would be seeing Indochina—on the page and in our heads—well into the 21st century. He always makes the reader aware that, just beneath the gossamer delicacy of the culture he’s describing, is something hard as steel: Thi-Linh sinks her nails into one French cheek until she draws blood…. “My deepest astonishment came with seeing how much Congai anticipates perhaps the greatest and most evergreen foreign novel about modern Vietnam, The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. Almost ninety years later, even in his wildest moments, Hervey caught something true that those of us more than twice his age can only bow before.

Pico Iyer, Foreword

This is the story of a young girl—a congai—named Thi-Linh, a creature of fragile beauty and savage instinct born to an Annamite mother, who aspires to attain the sophisticated life of her French father.

Harry Hervey’s 1927 tale of a young girl—a congai—named Thi-Linh is drunk with sensuous beauty, irony and dark intensity.

Thi-Linh is a creature of fragile beauty and savage instinct born to an Annamite mother, who aspires to attain the sophisticated life of her French father.

This, Mr. Hervey’s latest and most vivid novel, is the unfolding of her contact with the West in a land where, to quote the author, “white men sowed the legend of Civilization in…soil too fecund to resist any new growth.” But it is more than the story of a woman; it is the story of a country — Indo-China, where France mingles with Asia in a scene of throbbing color.”