Spinning Tropics

Meet Hiro. She's tall, lanky, and awkward—a twenty-something Japanese woman who has decamped to Vietnam from Tokyo to work as a language teacher.

Meet Dung. She's shy, beautiful, and tough—a young Vietnamese woman studying Japanese, determined to create a better life for herself and her family.

When Dung becomes one of Hiro's students, they are instantly drawn to each other. For both of them, it is their first time in love with another woman. But when Konno, an older Japanese businessman, befriends Hiro, Dung begins to grow unbearably jealous. What unfolds is a love triangle with very complicated, ultimately devastating, results. Set against the backdrop of a Vietnam on the economic rise, debut novelist Aska Mochizuki vividly brings to life the buzz of motorcycles and the tastes of Vietnamese coffee and spicy papaya salads; the confines of the Vietnamese family; the lingering effects of long wars; the rich who ride the economic wave and the poor who are left behind. Spinning Tropics is a lush and evocative story of an intoxicating love affair.