Duong thu huong biography of michael

"Those American bastards!"

Rarely does one come across an exclamation like this, especially in so revered a Western institution as the Penguin book. But it forms a kind of refrain in Duong Thu Huong's Novel Without a Name, an account from the North Vietnamese perspective of what Huong calls the "anti-American resistance." The cry is first uttered by a female soldier when she realizes -- in trying and failing to seduce Quan, a male soldier and the book's protagonist -- that Quan has become impotent because of "all those chemicals" - presumably defoliants. Another woman dreams wistfully of the future after "those American bastards leave."

I first heard of Duong Thu Huong when asked to review her first novel, Beyond Illusions, written in 1987 but not available in America until 2002. Much - too much, it seemed to me - was made by past reviewers and blurb-writers of the fact that Huong had been imprisoned for her political beliefs (democratic, pluralistic) and that her books (treacherous, acerbic) had been banned. Not that I don't condemn censorship or totalitarian regimes. But there seemed to be something of a self-aggrandizing subtext that I did not like: Pity the poor author to have been born under the red flag, and be glad that you live in the land of the free.

Novel Without a Name has a rather more complicated message, including the idea that war is terrible unto madness. The book begins with a line that could have come from Hemingway: "I listened all night to the wind howl through the Gorge of Lost Souls." But when it comes to depicting horrors, Huong is far more unflinching than Hemingway. Quan encounters six "naked corpses. Women....The soldiers had raped them before killing them....So this was how graceful, girlish bodies rotted...." Quan notices that the women's possessions were limited to "a few pieces of red and blue yarn, a few betel nuts. The yarn to tie their hair, the betel nuts to

The River Where Blood is Born by Sandra Jackson-Opoku – this is a multi-generational book, complete with gods and tricksters looking on. Much like some of my favorite Alice Walker (yes, this one starts in Africa as well). This will get a full review soon.

Best European Ficition 2010, which I reviewed for BookBrowse.com (I did like it, despite my avoidance maneuvers).

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon– this book was recently returned to me from a friend who had borrowed it. A novella of Sherlock Holmes’s final investigation. Chabon never disappoints, and I don’t even like Sherlock Holmes.

Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean – the story of a woman who survived some of WWII by living (with the rest of the employees & their families) in a museum in the USSR. The story bounces back and forth between her current life in the U.S. Pacific NW – while she is suffering from Alzheimer’s – and her memories of that war-torn winter in… Leningrad, naturally. Lots of interesting questions about memory and what is real, and the power of the human spirit to survive just about anything, and the way myth and art assist in that survival.

My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme– I read this because I loved the Julia Child portions of the Julie & Julia film, and this book did not disappoint. The film clearly captured her exuberance and passion for food, France and her husband that shines through this book. Takes us from their arrival in France through the second edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and the creation of her television show. Co-written by Child and her grand-nephew.

Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong– which I reviewed here.

A Disobedient Girlby Ru Freeman. This is the story of an Indian girl…. that I didn’t finish. I got through maybe two chapters, and it just wasn’t working for me. I don’t entirely blame the book – the character was mildly interesting up to the point where I stoppe