Duong Thu Huong

“Reminiscent of All Quiet on Western Front and The Red Badge of Courage. . . . A breathtakingly original work."—San Francisco Chronicle Twenty-eight-year-old Quan has been fighting for the Communist cause in North Vietnam for a decade. Filled with idealism and hope when he first left his village, he now spends his days and nights dodging stray bullets and bombs, foraging scraps of food to feed himself and his men. Quan seeks comfort in childhood memories as he tries to sort out his conflicting feelings of patriotism and disillusionment. Then, given the chance to return to his home, Quan undertakes a physical and mental journey that brings him face to face with figures from his past—his angry father, his childhood sweetheart, his boyhood friends now maimed or dead—and ultimately to the shattering reality that his innocence has been irretrievably lost in the wake of the war. In a voice both lyrical and stark, Duong Thu Huong, one of Vietnam’s most beloved writers, powerfully conveys the conflict that spiritually destroyed her generation. “If it is a crime to take an unflinching look at the reality of war and life under a totalitarian regime, and to do it with great art and mastery, then Duong Thu Huong, is gloriously guilty.”—The New York Times Book Review

Novel without a Name

Thu Hương Dương

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.

Novel Without a Name

Au centre du Vietnam en 1975, la femme d'un commerçant fortuné, père de son fils, retrouve son premier mari, considéré martyr de guerre, 14 ans auparavant. Désormais partagée entre deux maris, deux vies et deux conceptions de l'amour, comment s'en sortira-t-elle? [SDM].

Terre des oublis

Nina McPherson

Phan Huy Duong

A Novel

Beyond Illusions 

Now in paperback, a mesmerizing novel about a tragic love triangle between three characters whose destinies have been inextricably linked by war, from Vietnam's acclaimed writer and famous dissident No Man's Land is set in a hamlet in the countryside of central Vietnam immediately following the end of the war in 1975. The novel's plot is set in motion when a young woman, happily married to a successful farmer, comes home one day to find a throng of villagers assembled around her gate. She learns that her first husband, who reportedly died as a martyr and war hero many years back, is in fact alive and has returned to claim her. Faced with the immense pressure of the community and the Party authorities, who forced her marriage to the soldier on the day he was to leave for the front, she dutifully agrees to leave her second husband and their son to live in a squalid shack with the veteran. This tragic twist of fate gives the novel a powerful narrative drive that makes it Huong's most accomplished work to date.

No Man's Land

Een oude man in Vietnam kijkt terug op zijn bewogen leven en de even bewogen recente Vietnamese geschiedenis.

De hemel boven Vietnam / druk 1

Huy Đường Phan

A lyrical, autobiographical novel chronicles the story of a singer and her composer husband, from the growth of their passionate relationship in the midst of war to its tragic dissolution in war's aftermath. By the author of Paradise of the Blind. Reprint.

Memories of a Pure Spring

Phuong Linh, the heroine of this novel, is compelled to face her illusions and live in truth. The increasingly corrupt Communist regime leads her to a wrenching personal choice: whether or not to divorce her journalist husband. She soon discovers that virtually everyone has been corrupted.

Beyond Illusions

A major new novel from the most important Vietnamese author writing today Duong Thu Huong has won acclaim for her exceptional lyricism and psychological acumen, as well as for her unflinching portraits of modern Vietnam and its culture and people. In this monumental new novel she offers an intimate, imagined account of the final months in the life of President Ho Chi Minh at an isolated mountaintop compound where he is imprisoned both physically and emotionally, weaving his story in with those of his wife’s brother-in-law, an elder in a small village town, and a close friend and political ally, to explore how we reconcile the struggles of the human heart with the external world. These narratives portray the thirst for absolute power, both political and otherwise, and the tragic consequences on family, community, and nationhood that can occur when jealousy is coupled with greed or mixed with a lust for power. The Zenith illuminates and captures the moral conscience of Vietnamese leaders in the 1950s and 1960s as no other book ever has, as well as bringing out the souls of ordinary Vietnamese living through those tumultuous times.

The Zenith

First published in Vietnam in 1976, where it has been banned since then, this love story deals with the aftermath of the Vietnam war and how the ordinary Vietnamese people caught up in the conflict can re-adapt to their everyday lives and loves.

In post-war Vietnam, a young, happily married woman finds her life turned upside down when her supposedly long dead first husband arrives in her village and, with the support of Party authorities, attempts to claim her as his own. By the author of Memories of a Pure Spring.

A reimagining of the final months of Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh recounts his physical and emotional imprisonment in an isolated mountaintop compound where his story is entwined with those of his wife's brother-in-law, an elder in a small village town and a close friend and political ally. 17,500 first printing.

Duong Thu Huong

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