Ancion wrote the first part of the novel in 12 uninterrupted hours at the L'Espace French Cultural Institute in Hanoi on September 25, 2014, while the second part was completed in 12 hours over four days at Nha Nam Bokstore in Ho Chi Minh City.

The publication of the book was sponsored by the Wallonie Bruxelles delegation in Vietnam and the Nha Nam Publishing House.

Speaking at a press conference held in Hanoi on March 19 to introduce the work, Christian Bourgoignie, Head of the Wallonie Bruxelles delegation in Vietnam, said that it is a challenge to create an appealing story with a full structure including an introduction, plot and conclusion in just 24 hours, but Ancion had nailed it.

Staged in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the novel groups different stories of different characters: a Belgian businessman and a Vietnamese durian-seller named Dao, both suddenly thrown into chaos when the people around contract rabies and electricity is cut off in the city, and the long wait for rescue of a man and his girlfriend after being stuck in a cabin hanging mid-air on the ferris wheel at West Lake Water Park.

In the beautiful story, readers can catch familiar places and details, such as the Ferris wheel at the West Lake Water Park, the chaotic traffic in Hanoi, and Vietnamese people around them, said Bourgoignie.

“Ancion has a very keen sense observation, that is why although he was in Vietnam for only a few days, what he accomplished in his novel may make readers believe that he had been in the country for a long time”, he hailed.

The book also features Ancion’s typical writing style: surreal and adventurous with a high sense of humour, he added.

Ancion wrote the novel online, which meant that French-speaking readers could follow the writing process and gave comments and feedbacks to the author. After the first part of the novel was completed in Hanoi, the number of online readers reached thousands.

Vietnamese translators Le Tuyet Nhung and Phung Hong Minh also worked at the same time as Ancion to translate his work to Vietnamese, allowing Vietnamese readers to keep on track with the story.

“It was a time-pressured but interesting experience for me to work on this project,” said translator Le Tuyet Nhung at the press conference. As the novel follows many characters in many contexts, Minh and I had to closely divide our work so that our translations would not overlap, she said.

“At first, we began translating right after Ancion posted his writing to the internet, but we found that it pushed us in such a hurry, so we decided to translate line-to-line, which meant that when the author wrote a sentence, we immediately translated it, and spent 2-3 minutes reviewing the whole paragraph before moving to the next,” Nhung shared.

‘A Slight Panic’ was initiated from a meeting in Hanoi in 2014 between the Belgian writer and Nha Nam Publishing House, when the latter asked to purchase the copyright of Ancion’s book, ‘Quatrieme Etage’ (Fifth Floor), to translate and publish in Vietnamese.

As Ancion had already completed a 24-hour marathon writing event in Brussels in 2010 and in New York in 2013, the Wallonie Bruxelles delegation suggested he repeat the same feat in Vietnam during his stay in the country to advertise the ‘Fifth Floor’ novel.

The publication of the book in both French in Vietnamese is a vivid illustration of open-door awareness of the Wallonie Bruxelles delegation and the French-speaking community to open the literary door to welcome others, Christian Bourgoignie said.

Although we have promoted cultural diversification, language barriers remain; therefore, by introducing a literary work in other languages, we have helped to protect other languages, and by protecting their language, we have helped to protect our own language, he stressed.

Born in 1971 in Belgium, Ancion is a graduate of the University of Liege. He won several international awards for young authors in 1989 and 1991. He has published more than 20 books of all genres so far, including fiction, short stories and poetry. His novel, ‘The 35-billion Euro Man, helped him earn the 2008 Victor Rossel Young Readers Award. The novel was later adapted to theater and as a movie.