Novel without a Name
by Duong Thu Huong
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Book Summary Information
Author: Duong Thu HuongTranslator: Phan Huy Duong
Translator: Nina McPherson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-06-01
ISBN: 0140255109
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Novel without a Name
Book Review: "That ideal, well, the kids need it. And it's all we need to turn them into monks, soldiers, or cops."
Summary: 5 Stars
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" ("Tie'u Tuy'et 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.
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