Catfish and Mandala

Join Andrew X. Pham in his epic solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam. Born in Vietnam and raised in California, Pham embarks on a year-long journey following the suicide of his sister. Through the Mexican desert and a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan, he finally arrives to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." Catfish and Mandala is a vibrant, picaresque memoir about a young Vietnamese-American man's search for cultural identity that's written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure.