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Tree of Smoke Reading Order

Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke (2007) is the great American Vietnam War novel — Skip Sands, CIA operative working for his uncle the Colonel, and his relationship with two brothers from Phoenix, one of whom goes to Vietnam and one of whom runs from the draft, and a Vietnamese woman Nguyen Van Hoa working for the Vietnamese Catholic resistance. Johnson spent twelve years writing the novel and it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007. It is the most ambitious American novel about the Vietnam War — longer, stranger, and more formally inventive than The Things They Carried, and willing to take the moral complexity of the war seriously from multiple perspectives.

Where to start

Tree of Smoke

Complete Tree of Smoke Book List

  1. 1

    Tree of Smoke

    Denis Johnson·2007·The complete standalone novel — approximately 600 pages, covering 1963-1983, the National Book Award winner and the most comprehensive American fiction treatment of the Vietnam War.
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  2. 2

    Jesus' Son

    Denis Johnson·1992·The essential Johnson short fiction — eleven stories narrated by a nameless junkie in the American Midwest, Johnson's most celebrated earlier work, the natural companion to Tree of Smoke for readers who want more Johnson.
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  3. 3

    Already Dead

    Denis Johnson·1997·The California gothic Johnson novel — Nelson Fairchild and the Mendocino coast, less celebrated than Tree of Smoke or Jesus' Son but essential for dedicated Johnson readers.
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Tree of Smoke — Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tree of Smoke difficult to read?

Tree of Smoke is long (approximately 600 pages) and its structure — multiple viewpoint characters across two decades — requires patience with a narrative that does not always move quickly. Johnson's prose is consistently beautiful but the novel's sense of moral disorientation is deliberate, reflecting the experience of the war itself. Most readers who commit to the first hundred pages find the novel increasingly gripping. It is the most demanding of Johnson's major works but also the most comprehensive.

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