Dumb Luck by Vu Trong Phung as a colonial urban narrative

Employing Bakhtin's concept of chronotope, this article examines the narrative construction of settings in the novel Dumb Luck by Vu Trong Phung. Identifying the core chronotope in Dumb Luck – the colonial city of Hanoi – as the juxtaposition, bifurcation and interference between two sub-chronotopes – the sidewalk and the French residence, with cultural behaviors that epitomize a rural world in disintegration and a urban world in emergence, respectively.