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.