A couple named Catholic and Ethos struggle with the loss of their child. How? With fishtanks and jellyfish burials, Persephone's pomegranate seeds, and affairs with the neighbors. Fish in Exile spins unimaginable loss through classical and magical tumblers, distorting our view so that we can see the contours of a parent's grief all the more clearly.
"In this jagged and unforgettable work, Vi Khi Nao takes on a domestic story of losing one's children and elevates it to Greek tragedy. Refusing sentimentality and realism, she shows how personal devastation can feel, to the sufferer, as powerful and enduring as myth."
Viet Thanh Nguyen
"[Nao's] sentences roll in and surround like a thick fog, dampening, chilling, becoming in certain moments, wholly iridescent."
Boston Globe
"Nao, who was born in Vietnam, blends prose and poetry in her heart-wrenching novel about a couple grieving for their two dead children."
