Novel
Bên kia bờ ảo vọng
Not translated into English
Dương Thu Hương · 1987
Synopsis
Linh, a literature teacher at a secondary school in Hanoi, discovers that her household's comfortable circumstances depend on the flattering articles that her husband, a journalist, agrees to write for the authorities. She refuses to hear his reasons, grows distant from him, and falls in love with a prominent composer, a former lover of her own aunt, to the point of forgetting her daughter. Around them unfolds the world of the official artists, with their arrangements, their reputations and their acts of cowardice.
Context
The book sold tens of thousands of copies before being withdrawn from sale; the French publisher reports that it was the bedside book of an entire generation. It appeared at the moment when the country was opening up, and it is regarded as one of the texts that opened the literature of renewal. Its author was later expelled from the party, imprisoned for seven months, and her books banned in the country, where they circulate in copies. The French translation appeared from Philippe Picquier in 1996, in a Vietnamese series directed by its translator.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred pages, readable in French. It helps to know that the milieu described is that of state writers and musicians, and that the love plot is what reveals it.
Prizes and reception
Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy in 2005, honoured in France when it was translated, in 1996, and one of the books that made Vietnamese letters known abroad.