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Novel without a Name

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This book is narrated by Quan, a twenty-eight year-old soldier of the North Vietnamese Army who, after spending ten years in the jungles of central Vietnam, is thoroughly disillusioned by the horrible and absurd realities of war. The narrator's tone is one of disenchantment, of wistful longing for all that has been lost--youth, life, love, family. As also shown in Paradise of the Blind, Duong Thu Huong has a skill for detailed descriptions of everyday objects and scenes, which are often made grotesquely surreal by her minute, harsh, objective observations. For example, in describing the decrepit mental and physical state of Quan's childhood friend Bien, she writes, "He sat in a pile of filth and excrement, surrounded by pools of milky, rancid urine. A torn calendar. An old tin can filled with water." Everything touched upon by the war--the natural environment, the people--is made ugly, thus adding to the war's horror. Even her flowers are drenched in red colors of blood. In such an environment of degradation and death, people struggle to retain the smallest hint human decency. This struggle is movingly portrayed in the episode when Quan spends a night in a field station, the sole personnel of which is a homely girl who heroically goes about burying her dead comrades. Though forced by duty to spend the best years of her life in a bleak environment, she tries to retain some of her youthful feminine idealism by decorating her cave-room with pictures of French singers and a paper flower, and washing and combing her hair to get rid of the stench of human corpses which never goes away. Her futile effort in trying to get Quan to make love to her expresses a tragic desperation. The book has no main conflict, other than Quan's personal, psychological, spiritual conflict. As such, the book has no central story-line, but is rather a series of dramatic episodes of the last days of the war, interspersed with reveries that are sometimes nightmarish, sometimes poetically dreamy. The book raises the question: Is ideological glory worth its heavy price paid for in the irrevocable LOSS of love, life, and innocence.

Novel Without A Name by Duong Thu Huong is a terrific novel that lets the reader into the head of a Vietnamese soldier fighting for the North Vietnam side during the Vietnam War. A twenty-eight year old man, Quan, is the narrator of Novel Without A Name. Quan's view of life is much different from what it was when he was a naive 18-year-old, enlisting in the army with his childhood friends. Back then, Quan had thought of war as a glorious time; a time when heroes and legends were made. At this point, Quan has begun to see the Vietnam War for what it really was; a brutal massacre needlessly killing his fellow Vietnamese people. Luong, once Quan's childhood friend, and now his commander who's life has become the Communist Party, sends Quan on a mission to find Bien, their childhood friend. The other task that Quan is given is one that Luong does not report to the officials, he asks Quan to go to their home village. Luong wants Quan to do this for a variety of reasons. First, he knows that the war will be going on much longer than was ever intended, and he knows that Quan misses his home. Second, Luong wants Quan to reassure all the families back home that they are doing well, even if this is partially a lie. Quan sets out on his long journey, and unfortunately is met with bad news. The war has driven Bien to insanity. This insanity was caused by the fact that Bien has a life threatening form of malaria, which he got from a mosquito; a very common occurrence during the Vietnam War. The cell that holds Bien was on par with others during the War, but was nonetheless despicable. The crazy man eats, lives, and sleeps in his own waste, and is malnourished.
After seeing Bien, Quan returns home to his village. He finds that it is not only he who has changed during the 10 years that he has been absent. His childhood girlfriend, Hoa, whom he had planned to marry, has become pregnant by a passing soldier. Her life is in shambles and there is nothing he can do to help her. In addition, Quan learns that his brother had died. This came as a shock, as Quan had not even known that his brother had enlisted. After Quan learns that it was his father who encouraged Quang to join the army, he is enraged. His father, like many other fathers during the time, had been sucked in by the Communist propaganda. He had volunteered his son as a way to attain some personal honor. The shaky relationship between the father and son grows worse, and Quang leaves his home village unhappy with his life.
During the course of the book, Quan encounters many people, all who give the reader an idea of what the society that existed in Vietnam during the war was like. Novel Without A Name by Duong Thu Huong is a great book. Because the book was told from the point of view of a boi doi, otherwise known as a soldier, the book seems so much more real. By reading Novel Without A Name I feel that I have learned so much about the Vietnam war in a way that was much more interesting than a book full of dates and facts.
Reading this book also gave me information about the Vietnam War that could never have been obtained from a textbook. No textbook could have fully expressed the horrors of the Vietnam war like Novel Without A Name did. A textbook would not have told the real life experiences people went through. For example, Quan, the narrator of the Novel Without A Name tells of a skeleton he discovered in the forest. The decomposed body was lying in a hammock hidden by trees deep in a Vietnamese forest. Quan deduces that the man must have become lost in the maze of trees, and after becoming too week from starvation to move on, made a hammock and died a painful death. After searching the area, Quan found a knapsack with items of clothing, and a letter requesting that the soldier's remains be brought to his mother. No textbook would have told this story. I never would have known about how notorious the Vietnamese forests were for being traps that easily ensnared humans passing through. Basically, Novel Without A Name took me behind the scenes of the Vietnam War. There are thousands of books on the Vietnam War, but these books cover only what occurred on the battlefields, not what was going on in the lives of the people living in Vietnam during the time of the war.
Another example of how Duong Thu Huong took me behind the scenes of the war, was her description of a woman with whom Quan came into contact on his journey. This woman who collected the bodies of the dead in her area, was beastly, but kind. She took Quan into her home because he needed food and shelter. During the course of the novel, two other families took in Quan when he was in need of food and shelter. During the Vietnam War, people throughout the country pulled together and took care of their men in action. This was a common practice during the Vietnam War that I would not have known had I not read the book.
Novel Without A Name can at times be gruesome, but thus is the nature of war. If a book about the Vietnam War did not include parts that sickened one, then that book would not be accurately be informing readers of what occurred during the Vietnam War. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Though by reading Novel Without A Name I do not know about all the battles that took place or the famous commanders that reigned during the war; I can honestly say that I understand what happened during the Vietnam War.

As an American, I have only read about the Vietnam war from a US perspective. During my visit to Vietnam this year, I went to the Vietnam War Museum in Ho Chim Minh city which provided a Vietnamese perspective on the war. I was extremely moved and so upon returning to Tokyo (where I live) I came across this Novel Without A Name. The author really captured the pain, sorrow and loss of innocence that faced young Vietnamese men during these decades of war. I can't imagine being at war for over a decade (if we include the French war) when you life can be taken-away from you and your loved ones at any moment. Admist all this, the cental character tries to find a reason for being in all that he loves. A real sad book that I would not reccommend unless you have the heart to understand the psyche of this generation of Vietnamese youth. I enjoyed it.....

I am a veteran of the American war in Vietnam. I served two tours as a helicopter gunship pilot. I returned in 1971 totally disillusioned with my government, the South Vietnamese government, the mainstream media, and mainstream religion -- all of whom promoted this war as the way to make the world safe for democracy (wasn't that supposed to be WW-I?). I began to do my research about Vietnam to understand how I, a 19-year old college student, could be so deceived and betrayed as to give up my college deferment and volunteer to go to war for the American oligarchy. Dozens of books later, I found two books that were far and away above the rest. The first, Bernard Fall's ''Last Reflections'' is the most comprehensive and truthful account of Vietnam and the colonial powers that tried to occupy and rule that ''domino'' in Southeast Asian. The second, ''Novel Without a Name'' by Duong Thu Huong, was written by a VC soldier who fought the Americans for 10-years. She was one of three survivors of her unit. She told the heart-wrenching story of the American war from the Vietnamese point of view. Her description of combat PTSD on page 152 is the most authentic I have ever read. To quote another author, Major General Smedley, ''War is a Racket.'' Maybe someday the American voters will wake up.

It should be noted that Duong Thu Huong has done prison time for her writings.

How interesting to see the other side of the same Vietnam War coin and find such vivid prose delineating a story of endless sacrifice, party corruption and bitter cynicism.

U.S. soldiers had 13 month tour of duty. The North had as long as it took- 15 years in the hero's case.

She writes expertly and hammers together a story of one man's experience of the war moving full circle from party ideologue to spent survivor leading an ever diminishing group of veterans

...when it was a jungle, and not "upgraded" to a rain forest. Duong Thu Huong has written one of the classic, most realistic accounts of the Vietnamese experience during what they called "the American War." Along with Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam and Duong's other novel, Paradise of the Blind: A Novel, they are essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Vietnamese perspective on the war.

The oddly titled novel is rich in a variety of unusual vignettes that convey the true horror of the "bo dai's" (Vietnamese foot soldier) daily life, with deprivations, discomforts, and death, their own, and their comrades, always present. It's vital to recall that the jungles of the highlands were as alien, and terror-inducing, for the Vietnamese, who, in general came from the flat lands of the rice-growing deltas, as it was for the Americans. The novel's initial scene involves the hunting and eating of an orangutan, all too human-like in its cries and baby-like hands. The soldier's desperate need for protein eventually overcame their qualms.

The vast majority of the novel is not about actual battles or skirmishes. Quan is the central character, at the age of 28, and has been in the war for 10 years. He was childhood friends with Luong, who is his commander now, and Bien, who has been driven crazy. Luong requests that Quan visit Bien, and determine his true condition, and as extra fillip, take leave to his native village where the three have grown up. Quan's trip across Vietnam is a useful technique for obtaining a sampling of life, deep in what seems to be a "forever war." Duong is a most perceptive observer of the human condition; a scene that underscores this is her depiction of Quan's rejection of a pro-offered sexual encounter with a lonely and ugly female soldier who tended the trails. His trip home is no American "R&R" (Rest and Recreation); he has to walk most of it, subject to the incessant bombing. He even gets lost in an area of giant colocassias (which are what Americans call "elephant ears.") There are memorable scenes with Bien, as well as his now pregnant (by another, unnamed) childhood sweetheart.

Duong never reveals the date, until almost the end of the book, nor the specific locations, which are important mechanisms for conveying what the soldiers at the time actually felt: war without end in sight, and always in an alien landscape. She juxtaposes the present with flashbacks of a perhaps overly idealized childhood in the peaceful native village.

The climatic scene occurs about half-way through, when Quan is on a train going back towards the front. Two high-ranking officials board, and take the seats of two other foot soldiers. They are fat and sleek, and present an utterly cynical view on taking advantage of the idealism of youth in the war effort to promote their own gains. Consider: "Once you're over fifty, they're just a bunch of moldy old memories. That ideal, well, the kids need it. And it's all we need to turn them into monks, soldiers, or cops. And it worked, whether it was the revolutionary uniform or the Nationalist police cap." Or: "If religion is an opiate, then nobody needs that opiate as much as we do!... We demolished the temples and emptied the pagodas so we could hang up portraits of Marx, enthrone a new divinity for the masses." Could our own "masters of war" put it any better?

Is it any wonder this novel is banned in Vietnam; and that Duong has spent some time in jail?

I was on the other side of the proverbial river, in the Highlands also, with the jungle as a constant, nearby, frightening companion. Few of us who were there, despite our various perspectives on the war, could not help but hold a grudging admiration for those who endured such hardships, with much more limited resources, in order to fight us.

Duong Thu Huong is a remarkable woman, who understands, and empathizes with the men who fought the war. A 5-star plus.

Novel Without a Name relates the story of Quan, a long-time soldier who has risen to the rank of captain in the then-North Vietnamese army in its War Against the Americans. After nearly ten years of continuous active duty, Quan has become disillusioned with war. He also becomes increasingly bitter about the inequality he observes within Vietnam. In Quan's telling there is an inverse relationship between power and service. Party leaders, in the military and out, mouth platitudes that no longer have meaning to the ones doing the actual fighting. Huong portrays this cynical, if accurate, view as being widely held.

Huong communicates the terribleness of war in all its effects - death, injury, civilian displacement, and widespread hunger to name a few. Huong moves Quan back and forth in time so that the reader learns something about his upbringing and village life. The book lacks focus and flow. The story sort of centers around Quon and two friends from his home village, one of whom has risen to high rank and the other who remains a mere sergeant, but Huong never holds that focus for long. The book feels rather disjointed.

Although the book was banned in Vietnam, Huong never expresses any sympathy whatsoever for the enemy, whether the Americans or their Vietnamese `lackeys'. She does convey discontent with the suppression of ideas, the rigidity of permissible thoughts and expression, and the uneven distribution of benefits.

In this somewhat uneven book, Huong succeeds best when she relates the myriad impacts of such a long war. Huong's long military service gives the book credibility. American readers in particular will benefit from reading about the war from the viewpoint of the enemy. Recommended.

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.

"NOVEL WITHOUT A NAME" by Duong Thu Huong is about a soldier fighting for the ideals of Communism. He is in fact, a Viet Cong officer and has been fighting the war for 10 years. His decade of fighting, killing, and watching his life slowly fade away causes him to become jaded and a disbeliever in the "great cause."

His feelings of patriotism are eventually covered with the dust of hatred and disillusionment. His entire life begins to focus on his childhood, and the love of his mother. "Quan" is 28 years old in this novel and at times, his focus on his mother seems (to my thinking), almost bordering in the shadows of an Oedipus Complex.

"Quan" is no doubt, a man of passion, art, and love. Unfortunately, most of these assets are lost in the clattering fire of AK-47's and steaming hot jungles. His opportunity to return home during these perilous times only helps to awaken his realization of change. He sees the change in his country, change in his family, change in his dreams, and most importantly... the change in himself!

Ms. Duong Thu Huong is truly gifted and one of the most descriptive writers I have ever read. She obviously knows her country, it's people, their karma, and their souls. She is without a doubt...a superb writer!!

An unusual title; an unusual book, and ...a great story.

War is never a good thing. This book can give us a picture of what we were fighting against. We were not just fighting for our country we were fighting a people. A people with thoughts and dreams for an uncertian future. Let this book be a statement to all that there are two sides to every war.