A husband and wife rent asunder by the drowning deaths of their two infant children. Together – just barely – they will dredge the entire ocean to get them back. The husband is building a massive aquarium in the living room and is edging towards an affair with a next-door neighbor. The wife is sleeping with a next-door neighbor and knitting tiny dresses so they can walk the fish. A very sad sad book about grief and barriers, made even more devastating by its shockingly irreverent, and in turns, shockingly reverent, style.
— TomPraise for Vi Khi Nao:
Here I was allowed to forget for a while that that is what books aspire to tell, so taken was I by more enthralling and mysterious pleasures. --Carole Maso
How do you bear the death of a child? 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.
Vi Khi Nao was born in Long Khanh, Vietnam. Vi's work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, was the winner of 2014 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Her novel, Fish In Exile, will make its first appearance in Fall 2016 from Coffee House Press. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University.