A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is a hauntingly beautiful collection of interconnected stories that gives voice to those living in the shadow of war.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, a community of Vietnamese immigrants struggles to build new lives in America while carrying the memories, losses and hopes of the country they left behind. Through a rich tapestry of unforgettable characters Robert Olen Butler explores the profound emotional cost of displacement and the enduring search for belonging.
Written with extraordinary compassion and lyrical power, these stories illuminate the universal human experiences of love, longing, identity and redemption. Butler's remarkable ability to inhabit the inner lives of his characters transforms history into something intimate, immediate and deeply moving.
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and widely regarded as a modern classic, this definitive edition includes two additional stories that complete the collection's narrative arc, returning readers to the jungles of Vietnam and bringing this unforgettable journey full circle.
Profound, poignant and beautifully crafted, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is an essential work of contemporary American literature and a timeless meditation on memory, exile and the resilience of the human spirit.

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including Hell, A Small Hotel, Perfume River, and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.