Novel Without a Name by Thu Huong Duong
"Novel Without a Name" by Thu Huong Duong is a poignant exploration of identity and the human experience amidst the chaos of the Vietnam War. The narrative centers on Quan, a young platoon commander, who embarks on a journey to rescue his mentally ill friend Bien from imprisonment. Through Quan's reflections and encounters during this journey, the novel delves into the complexities of war, highlighting the contrasting paths taken by Quan, Bien, and their friend Luong, who has become entrenched in the military hierarchy.
As Quan navigates his thoughts and memories, he grapples with the disillusionment and horror of warfare, questioning the meaning of his actions and the ideologies he has been taught. The novel offers a critical perspective on the futility of conflict, emphasizing the shared pain and loss experienced by soldiers on all sides. It also sheds light on the often overlooked North Vietnamese viewpoint of the war, inviting readers to consider the broader implications of identity and power within the context of conflict. Overall, "Novel Without a Name" serves as a powerful reminder of the personal toll of war and the search for meaning in a fragmented world.
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Novel Without a Name by Thu Huong Duong
Translated by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson
First published:Tiêu thuyêt vô dê, 1990 (English translation, 1995)
The Work
Novel Without a Name is the story of a young platoon commander, Quan, who struggles to find his identity in the confusion of the last days of the Vietnam War. Ten years before the novel opens, Quan joins the army with his boyhood friends, Bien and Luong. Each represents a different response to the search for identity in the chaos of war. By the time of the novel’s opening, Luong has risen in the ranks of the army; he is an officer at division headquarters and deputy to the commander. He accepts and disseminates Party ideology, finding a space for himself in the bureaucracy of war. Bien, on the other hand, never rises above sergeant. The deprivations of the war lead him to mental illness, and he is imprisoned as a lunatic. Quan’s struggle for identity is the most complicated.
At the heart of the book is Quan’s journey, taken under Luong’s orders, into the interior of Vietnam to free Bien from his imprisonment. As Quan travels, he reflects, dreams, and hallucinates about the horrors of the war. Quan recalls the glory showered on the three friends when they joined the army, contrasting it to the death and destruction around him. He strives to find meaning in his encounters with an old man and child, with a woman whose job it is to bury the dead, and with a skeleton he finds hanging in a hammock. When he encounters Party officials on a train and hears their cynical assessment of the Vietnamese people, he begins to suspect that his only identity is as a puppet, as someone who follows orders from above and enforces those orders on those below.
In the final pages of the novel, a confrontation with one of his privates who has destroyed a cache of American medicine startles Quan into the realization that all the death and loss has been meaningless. This bleak epiphany is underscored when Quan sees his first American, a prisoner, and realizes that he no longer hates Americans. He sees the American as a pawn of another government, just as Quan himself is the pawn of his own government.
Although North Americans have had ample opportunity to consider the American experience in Vietnam, they have had little chance to view the war from a North Vietnamese perspective. Novel Without a Name demonstrates the futility of war from the point of view of the common soldier.
Bibliography
Allen, Douglas, and Ngo Vinh Ling, eds. Coming to Terms: Indochina, the United States, and the War. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991.
Bao Ninh. The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam. Translated by Phan Than Hao and edited by Frank Palmos. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
Huynh, Jade Ngoc Quang. South Wind Changing. St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1994.