Dương Thu Hương

Disillusioned Vietcong soldier wanders through the Vietnam war and reflects on the path of his life.

Oh my god, this novel is just everything. I picked this up because I was interested in getting a POV of the Vietnam war outside of the American filter. I loved in this novel that the focus was how the people are effected by the war rather than being a sidenote to the war itself. Usually novels about wartime make the battles the most important aspect to the point where they might as well be the show more central characters, but here they happen between chapters/paragraphs/sentences so that the author can explore how people function during on-going trauma.

The bulk of the novel felt like a classic travel novel, with the MC wandering around Vietnam in a haze of despair for the path of his life and the fate of his friends and family. His turmoil at the disappointment of discovering the reality of jingoism, in his fall from the fervor of youthful nationalist to the disillusionment of a jaded gravedigger, was such a potent anti-war travelogue. show less

To understand Duong Thu Huong's novels, it is important to understand her background. At the age of twenty, Duong left college and volunteered to lead a Communist Youth Brigade to the front in the "War Against the Americans." She served in one of the most bombed regions of the war and was one of three survivors out of her group of twenty. She was also at the front during the 1979 Chinese attack on Vietnam. But during the 1980s, she became a critic of the Communist regime and an advocate for show more human rights. She was expelled from the party in 1989, imprisoned briefly in 1991 (the year she published this novel), and had her passport revoked so she could not leave the country. Her books were extremely popular prior to her imprisonment, but they are now banned and everything she has written since then has had to be published abroad, despite being written for a Vietnamese audience.

Novel Without a Name is the story of Quan, a young Communist soldier who, when the story opens, has been fighting the Americans for ten years. He left his village at the age of eighteen, excited for glory and idealistic about his nation's role in history. But after ten years of hunger, disease, and killing, "there is this gangrene that eats at the heart." He is summoned to company headquarters by a former classmate, who tells him that their friend has been imprisoned in a camp for psychiatric cases, and can he go and see what might be done for him. Afterward he is given leave to visit their hometown for a couple of days. But his brief visit is not a return to his dreamed of childhood, it is the source of more disillusionment.

Never. We never forget anything, never lose anything, never exchange anything, never undo what has been. There is no way back to the source, to the place where the pure, clear water once gushed forth.

Quan's idealism may be in tatters, but the war goes on. He returns to the front and further horrific warfare, corruption, and spiritual decay.

Duong has said that she never intended to become a writer. She served as an exemplary soldier, hoarding her impressions, and began to write as an expression of her pain. That pain is clearly reflected in Quan's odyssey between war and home and back again. show less

The Communist party of North Vietnam in the 20th century destroyed families and disrupted whole communities. In the 1950s, anybody who had a house, any land, the smallest noodle shack, was denounced and forced to give up all their possessions, and shunned and shamed. Madame Que, the protagonist's mother, us married to a teacher, who is denounced. Hang's father leaves the village, and we never see him again. In fact, you will miss Hang's conception if you're not paying attention. Hang's Aunt show more Tam, her father's sister, maintains a lifelong love, defence, and reverence for him, and hates Madame Que for not keeping his memory alive for Hang. Madame Que, on the other hand, reveres her brother, a minor official in the Communist party, and the instigator of the denouncements of Hang's father and sister, and the consequent destruction of their lives. But Aunt Tam, really the central character, works her fingers to the Bone and rebuilds her life, while the petty Communist official lives a life of deprivation and hypocrisy. Hang is denied a father, and has a troubled relationship with her mother, which eventually totally crumbles. This book is a chronicle of what beauty, energy, spirit, and inspiration lies in the Earth, and how Humans can miss the whole beauty and happiness this life offers them, believing that happiness lies in material success, the esteem of whatever group is currently in power, and false pride.

Vegans will be grossed out by many parts of this book:
Page 139
"She had made one of my favorite soups: a mixture of lily buds, puree of a crab, and crab eggs. The eggs floated like clouds of spun gold in the middle of the lily buds, translucent from the cooking."
P.140
" 'Perfect. The women can start cutting up the scallions and the parsley. We're going to make an unforgettable tripe stew out of this,' another man chimed in. 'Oh, yeah, like the last time, for old Toan's memorial service. It's still stank of excrement,' someone shot back. The father spoke now. 'You are bitter, aren't you? I told you: I was drunk, and so I let the Cuu Brothers help me. That was fatal. Everyone knows they'll eat just about anything.' "
P.141
"Next to the kitchen door, a young man was shaving the butchered pig. His razor glinted in the beam of the lamp. Another young man with just the shadow of a mustache--he couldn't have been more than 17 or 18--Doused the pig with buckets of boiling water, dumping them over it at regular intervals. The blade of the first man's razor followed the rhythm of each Cascade of water and the pig's black bristles sheared off to reveal the naked whiteness of its skin."
P.176-177
"I obeyed, taking the plate of blood custard from him and putting it down on the tray. The dish looked good: the blood had congealed into a thick gelatin; there wasn't a trace of liquid at The rim; and the surface was sprinkled with fine strips of duck liver, crushed garlic, and peanuts grilled to a perfect golden brown."

Aunt Tam scolding Madame Que for starving Hang to buy medicine for her diabetic brother:
P.187
"In the end, everything comes to light in this world. The needle always emerges from the haystack. Do you think you can hide human actions, day in and day out, as they are revealed to others? Even from my village, I know about your life, see the price you pay. I don't reproach you. We all turn to family. After all, blood runs thick. And this love I feel for my brother, how could I deny it to others? But I want you to understand something clearly: your brother is my family's mortal enemy. He killed my brother. I forbid you to use my money to feed him."

Hang's despair over her mother's love for her brother, at the expense of love for her, and her trying to make sense of human life:
P.190
"I saw my mother, at that moment, grasping her knees to her chest in the middle of an empty house. I felt the tears trickled down my cheeks, one by one. That's the way it is. There's no dignity on this Earth for those who live and breathe in misery. I hadn't lost again."
P.199
"He shook my hand, kissed my head, and quickly crossed the street. Never look back, I thought, even for a second. No happiness can hold; every life, every dream, has its unraveling."
P.202-203
"There was something sinister about this tranquility, and order of this existence. It was the peace of a swamp, a far cry from our storms and squalls. Russian culture had bred too many broken dreams, all that was left was the pure, thin air of ideals, too poor to sustain human life, or its need for creativity and fulfillment. These calm, resigned faces seem engraved with no more than the memory of a culture that had once contributed milestones to the history of civilization." show less

Quan, who enlists to fight for his country as an idealistic 18-year-old, has now fought for North Vietnam for a decade. Those ten years have taught him, if nothing else, the costs of idealism. Even as he tries to balance his patriotism with his cynicism, Quan turns to old memories for solace. Given the chance to return home, he seizes on the chance to make the physically and psychologically demanding journey. That journey forces him to confront his past, among other things: his father, his show more childhood sweetheart, his boyhood friends now maimed or dead, and ultimately to recognize that his innocence and his idealism came at an enormous price. How should he handle his disillusionment with the Communist Party? A quiet, emotionally charged book, this often reads like the stories of an old man looking back on his life. That it is, instead, the reflections of a 28-year-old veteran, told mostly through a series of vignettes, illustrates the power of the book. Indeed, the collection of loosely connected “stories” really can be seen as almost a mythic quest by a hero toward (self-)knowledge. show less