Reading Ho Anh Thai through the manuscript left in the reception hall

The novel "The manuscript left in the lobby" by author Ho Anh Thai begins with an ironic situation: A man continuously misses his flight at 0:15, and then he accidentally becomes the reader of a novel manuscript left in the lobby. And the more he reads, the more the man is drawn into a strange maze, the peak of which is discovering that he may be the author of that manuscript.

However, the novel does not stop at questioning the reader-author relationship, but in it there is another story, a large picture of the country's history, of wars, the turmoil of the times throughout nearly a century, and also there are human fates, misfortunes, tragedies and endless love.

The novel is built according to a meta-fiction structure, the story is incorporated into the story. The first storyline revolves around a man in the airport space - a typical "away place" of the modern world.

Seemingly trivial details such as overweight luggage, arguments with airline staff, or confusion about punctuation are exploited humorously by Ho Anh Thai. The airport space appears as a vivid "warehouse of stories", a gathering place for all kinds of people, all situations, all cultural and psychological clashes.

The second storyline – the manuscript that the character reads – opens up a completely different space: Vietnamese history from 1949 to the early years of the 21st century, through the fates of 3 generations of women in a family.

The story begins with "her" - a Hanoi lady wandering from her family during the resistance war, when she returns to the city, she falls into awkward situations, being abused and suffering both physical and mental harm.

The second generation - the daughter of "her" - grew up in the context of the anti-American war, carrying in her heart pure emotional vibrations with a "military soldier". Through her story, writer Ho Anh Thai has successfully portrayed the private emotions of a personal person in a period of many upheavals.

In the third generation, the work shifts space to America with the story of the granddaughter. Here, issues of identity, ethnic confusion and efforts to assert oneself become prominent. The novel ends with a meeting between two generations, but instead of complete reconciliation, it is the aftertaste of bitterness and breakdown.

The manuscript left in the lobby" also continues to affirm Ho Anh Thai's familiar style: humorous, mocking tone, but containing depth of thought. The character constantly missing flights is not just a series of personal mistakes, but gradually becomes a metaphor of the "dismatch" between humans and modern times - where humans seem to control everything but are actually caught up in invisible mechanisms.

The manuscript left in the reception hall" is a novel that evokes anxiety. It is the anxiety of a person constantly missing the beat with time, of fates passing through history that never really control their own fate, and also the anxiety of the reader himself when realizing that the boundary between life and writing becomes more fragile than ever.

Two storylines – one at the airport, one in the manuscript – not only complement but also question each other, creating an open, dialogue-rich structure. And perhaps, what remains in the end is not the story of missed flights, or about 3 generations of Vietnamese women, but a vague but haunting feeling: Who knows, in this reading behavior, we are also writing, and ourselves, on some level, are the authors of the book we are holding in our hands.