Vietnam 1951 a little skeleton in a teakwooden chest

Indochina, 1951. Tonkin and northern Annam have been liberated from the French by the Vietminh. In the south, the French army and navy are fighting a vicious battle to keep the corrupt regime in Saigon in power.

It began for Ruben with a dream about puzzling meanings of floating bamboo braids.

We meet him in Nha Trang, an Annamese port town where he debarkes from a French ocean liner, in search of a monastery that should be somewhere in the mountains of Annam.

It was not the only reason for his quest: he had inherited a chest with unusual contents: a little skeleton, not of a child. Accompanying the chest was a manuscript - played into his hands by an old librarian - of a relative who had not survived the war. In it, his ancestor mentioned a monastery of the unknown order of Zong. A Chinese word, he would later find out, but the order seemed to be Japanese....

He engages a boy in Nha Trang to be his guide. Nguyen takes him to his grandmothers compound, where he lives with his mother Yen.

Ruben blends into Annamese life, trekking through forests and mountains with Nguyen and later with Yen; they travel by smuggling ships, old junks and rattling coasters from North to South and back again, across a war-torn country.