Novel_without_a_name
1997 Shortlist

Novel Without A Name

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

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. (From Penguin Random House)

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Duong
Thu Huong

Duong Thu Huong was born in the Thai Binh province of North Vietnam in 1947.

At the start of the 1980s, she spoke out at official Communist Party events and at congresses of the writers’ organizations, as well as in interviews for various Party publications, criticizing bureaucracy, corruption, and “intellectual cowardice.” A ban of her work was ordered after she published her third novel Nhung Thien Duong Mu (Paradise of the Blind) about the horrors of land reform from 1953.

Since 1991, the novels she has sent abroad for publication Tieu Thuyet Vo De (Novel Without A Name), Luu Ly (Memories of A Pure Spring), Ben Kia Bo Ao Vong, and Chon Vang (No Man’s Land) have all been translated into French and English and published in at least 10 other languages. (From Pen America)

Duong Thu Huong was born in the Thai Binh province of North Vietnam in 1947.

At the start of the 1980s, she spoke out at official Communist Party events and at congresses of the writers’ organizations, as well as in interviews for various Party publications, criticizing bureaucracy, corruption, and “intellectual cowardice.” A ban of her work was ordered after she published her third novel Nhung Thien Duong Mu (Paradise of the Blind) about the horrors of land reform from 1953.

Since 1991, the novels she has sent abroad for publication Tieu Thuyet Vo De (Novel Without A Name), Luu Ly (Memories of A Pure Spring), Ben Kia Bo Ao Vong, and Chon Vang (No Man’s Land) have all been translated into French and English and published in at least 10 other languages. (From Pen America)

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Nina
McPherson

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Huy
Duong Phan

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
12/01/1996
Country
Vietnam
Original Language
Vietnamese
Publisher
Picador / Pan Macmillan
Translator
Huy Duong Phan, Nina McPherson

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