Novel Without a Name

In the American mindset, two archetypes of the Vietnamese people have survived the end of the war in 1975-that of the unctuous and corrupt Southerner and that of the fanatically robotic Northerner. Neither stereotype, of course, is particularly accurate, and now a crop of Vietnamese writers is starting to actively dispel them. Quan, the disillusioned protagonist of this powerful novel, was a political idealist when he began his decade of army service for the Saigon government. Now, at age 28, his mind and body are weary, his hair prematurely gray. Close to the breaking point, he is sent on a strange mission behind the lines, where his childhood friend, Bien, is imprisoned, apparently having lost his mind. Nearby is Quan's native village, where his childhood sweetheart is now a pregnant pariah, and where other unhappy disclosures await Quan. He returns to the front in time for a bloody battle at war's end. Told in a series of impressionistic vignettes, the story is filled with incidents that bring home the insanity of military conflict, but the violence and brutality are conveyed in imagery rather than explicit description. Duong (Paradise of the Blind), a former Communist Party member, writes with integrity and an artist's sensibility and enhanced visual perception. The narrative is permeated with almost surreal sensual detail: the stench of rotting bodies, the sweet, sickly smell of drugs, the remembered fragrance of a field of violets in peacetime. Quan's searing memories and experiences pulse with anguish, and if Duong sometimes lets pathos approach bathos, she has, at the very least, created a hero capable of shattering stereotypes. First serial to Grand Street. (Feb.)