Product Description

The author of Paradise of the Blind, the first novel from Vietnam ever published in America, traces a young man's experiences fighting for North Vietnam, in a novel banned in Vietnam for its subversive content. Reprint. 10,000 first printing. NYT.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #232434 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-01
• Original language: Vietnamese
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Vietnamese novelist Huong, who has been imprisoned for her political beliefs, presents the story of a disillusioned soldier in a book that was banned in her native country.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
These two novelists, both of whom fought for North Vietnam, offer American readers a startlingly different perspective on the war.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
A compelling novel about the horror and waste of the Vietnam War--from the North Vietnamese point of view. The central character is Quan. At the age of 28, he's already a 10-year combat veteran. Like his fellow soldiers, Quan is so exhausted in body and mind that he yearns for death, even as he dreads it. Quan returns to his home village to investigate reports that an old friend has gone insane, and here he becomes aware of the war's other costs. The villagers are dispirited, because nearly everyone has lost a loved one. Poverty has blossomed. And the Communist hierarchy, once revered, is now viewed as corrupt and hypocritical. Huong (author of Paradise of the Blind, 1993) has a keen eye and a fine voice, which fearlessly reveals the anguish of a human heart searching for humanity. Brian McCombie

Customer Reviews

"That ideal, well, the kids need it. And it's all we need to turn them into monks, soldiers, or cops."
Fiction possesses (among other things) the brilliant quality of putting us in somebody else's shoes, and that in a manner as moving and eye-opening as it is safe and temporary. Still, in very few novels indeed could this quality be more urgently called for than in Duong Thu Huong's "Novel Without a Name" ("Tieu Tuyet Vô De", 1991). Certainly this nameless novel of war and its terrible costs--death and destruction, certainly, but also the disruption and interruption of lives, ravaging of hopes and dreams, and the pitiless erosion of youthful idealism and naive ambition--has something to say to everyone who's ever pondered the human condition and the insane things we do to each other in the name of our own pet ideologies. Certainly too this oddly straggling tale tracing the painful arc of a Viet Cong company commander's increasingly bitter disillusionment and spiritual fatigue as the war drags on for the better part of a decade must speak volumes to readers in Vietnam, if they can get their hands on this banned book published only abroad at all, as they reflect upon their own personal experiences and national history. Yes, then, this work of fiction is both evocatively specific and sweepingly universal in the way that all great literature inevitably turns out to be.

However, this novel (masterfully translated by the team of Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson) also has something very specific to reveal to the American reader. Opinions about the Vietnam War are incredibly diverse in this country, of course, but whether you think the war was a noble crusade against Communism, an ignoble act of cruel imperialism, or even just a bumbling mistake in U.S. policy, or anything else in-between or other, it eventually boils down to an American drama featuring American protagonists and antagonists in which the Vietnamese themselves are merely co-stars and extras. This goes for John Wayne's "The Green Berets" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" alike; even the more recent ersatz Beatles musical "Across the Universe" unconsciously locks itself into the same limited pattern. "Novel Without a Name" knocks one out of that pattern with a sudden rude jolt and as such is an essential corrective, an enlightening and thought-provoking remedy for this tunnel-vision, this blind spot, this lack of perspective. Life was just as complex if you were a North Vietnamese soldier, it turns out--it was also nasty, brutal, and interminably long (if you managed to survive, that is).

Besides all that, though, this is just a good, well-told story. Duong's prose deploys all five senses with searingly vivid force, placing the reader smack dab in the protagonist's world. With a few finely chosen details she sketches her characters indelibly in one's memory in a manner that flawlessly inspires you to give a darn what happens to them without sentimentally tugging at heartstrings in an obvious fashion. As novels go there seems to be no real structure or plot, merely a meandering spiral to a fizzling anticlimax that's vaguely unsatisfying but probably intentionally so--which sounds boring, but it's actually hard to put the book down. Moments of gritty ugly realism predominate, punctuated by almost hallucinatory dreams and visions sometimes darkening into nightmares, and perhaps this tense back-and-forth is what gives the novel its driving pattern and holds it together. That and the cycles of wandering travel, brief respite, and sudden violence. Whatever the case, "Novel Without a Name" is an unforgettably gripping and deeply important work that will haunt you long after the last page has been turned.

NOVEL WITHOUT A NAME
"NOVEL WITHOUT A NAME" by Duong Thu Huong is about a soldier fighting for the ideals of Communism. He is in fact, a Viet Cong officer and has been fighting the war for 10 years. His decade of fighting, killing, and watching his life slowly fade away causes him to become jaded and a disbeliever in the "great cause."

His feelings of patriotism are eventually covered with the dust of hatred and disillusionment. His entire life begins to focus on his childhood, and the love of his mother. "Quan" is 28 years old in this novel and at times, his focus on his mother seems (to my thinking), almost bordering in the shadows of an Oedipus Complex.

"Quan" is no doubt, a man of passion, art, and love. Unfortunately, most of these assets are lost in the clattering fire of AK-47's and steaming hot jungles. His opportunity to return home during these perilous times only helps to awaken his realization of change. He sees the change in his country, change in his family, change in his dreams, and most importantly... the change in himself!

Ms. Duong Thu Huong is truly gifted and one of the most descriptive writers I have ever read. She obviously knows her country, it's people, their karma, and their souls. She is without a doubt...a superb writer!!

An unusual title; an unusual book, and ...a great story.

Terse vivid prose unfurls a war story from the other side

It should be noted that Duong Thu Huong has done prison time for her writings.

How interesting to see the other side of the same Vietnam War coin and find such vivid prose delineating a story of endless sacrifice, party corruption and bitter cynicism.

U.S. soldiers had 13 month tour of duty. The North had as long as it took- 15 years in the hero's case.

She writes expertly and hammers together a story of one man's experience of the war moving full circle from party ideologue to spent survivor leading an ever diminishing group of veterans