Acclaimed author and political dissident Huong (Memories of a Pure Spring
, etc.) takes a hard look at the long-term repercussions of war in her latest novel. The luxuriantly beautiful village of Mountain Hamlet in central Vietnam is the setting for the story of Mein, a woman who learns that the husband she married 14 years ago and lived with for only a few weeks before he was sent off to fight in the Vietnam War, has actually survived and returned to claim her. Though she deeply loves her current husband, Hoan, and their son, she feels pressured by the strictures of her Communist community to return to her first husband, Bon, to honor the sacrifice he made for his country. The decision proves even harder because of Bon's repulsive physical condition and the abject poverty in which he lives. In long flashbacks, the novel follows Bon through his war experiences, and Hoan through the troubled events of his own past and present, revealing much about Vietnamese society in the process. This technique humanizes Hoan and Bon even as they each idolize Mein and her demure beauty. The outsize emotions of the two men and the tropical landscape lend an air of melodrama, but Mein's more calculating sensibility and the complicated choices she makes to satisfy herself and society keep the novel from descending into sentimentality. Agent, Anna Soler-Pont at Pontas Literary and Film Agency. (Apr. 13)
