Paradise of the Blind

by Dương Thu Hương

Now, at last, comes the first Vietnamese novel ever translated and published in North America. Duong Thu Huong is Vietnam's most beloved and outspoken novelist. In Paradise of the Blind she has created a devastating portrait of three women fighting to maintain their dignity in a society that expects ever greater sacrifices from them. Paradise of the Blind is a rich, sensuous journey through a Vietnam never seen before. In images of astonishing grace and power, and through her unforgettable gallery of women, Duong Thu Huong dazzles the reader with her ability to evoke the colors, the foods, the smells, and the age-old rituals of her country. At the center of the novel is Hang, a young woman forced to grow up too fast in the slums of Hanoi and the turbulence of modern Vietnam. Duong Thu Huong brilliantly captures Hang's rebellion against her mother and the loneliness of her search for self. There is Hang's mother, who watches, powerless, as her life is shattered by a fanatical political campaign led by her own brother. And there is the mysterious Aunt Tam, who has accumulated wealth and bitterness in equal parts and seeks to pass on both to her niece, Hang. The intoxicating beauty of the Vietnamese countryside, the hunger, the pride, the endurance of ordinary Vietnamese people confronted with the hypocrisy and corruption that surround them - all are here in this moving and lyrical novel. With the publication of Paradise of the Blind comes the introduction of a world-class storyteller whose extraordinary sensitivity and courage have captivated a generation of Vietnamese readers.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Asia, Literature, School, Classics, Asian Literature

270 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Dương Thu Hương (b. 1947) is a Vietnamese author and political dissident. Formerly a member of Vietnam's communist party, she was expelled from the party in 1989, and has been denied the right to travel abroad, and was temporarily imprisoned for her writings and outspoken criticism of corruption in the Vietnamese government.

Born in 1947 in Thai Binh a province in northern Vietnam, Dương came of age just as the Vietnam War was turning violent. At the age of twenty, when she was a student at Vietnamese Ministry of Culture’s Arts College, Dương Thu Hương volunteered to serve in a women’s youth brigade on the front lines of “The War Against the Americans". Dương spent the next seven years of the war in the jungles and tunnels of Binh Tri Thien, the most heavily bombarded region of the war. Her mission was to “sing louder than the bombs” and to give theatrical performances for the North Vietnamese troops, but also to tend to the wounded, bury the dead, and accompany the soldiers along. She was one of three survivors out of the forty volunteers in that group. She was also at the front during China’s attacks on Vietnam in 1979 during the short-lived Sino-Vietnamese War. However, in the period after Vietnam’s reunification in 1975, Dương became increasingly outspoken and critical about the repressive atmosphere created by the Communist government. Upon seeing the conditions in the South – compared with the North – she began speaking out against the communist government.
Dương moved to Paris in 2006. In January 2009, her latest novel, Đỉnh Cao Chói Lọi, was published; it was also translated into French as Au zénith.

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my endless quest to read books by women from around the globe, I read Paradise of the Blind by Vietnamese author Duong Thu Huong. During the 1980s, Huong denounced the atrocities of the Vietnamese government in a trilogy of novels, Paradise of the Blind being her most famous. Huong does not label herself as anti communist but growing up in Vietnam she witnessed many violations of human dignities. Her books have been banned on occasion in Vietnam and she herself spent time in a prison. Paradise of the Blind is Huong's fictional biographical account of growing up in a Vietnam still rebuilding itself after the war.

Hang is the only child of Que, who was once a member of a peasant class in a small village. During the militant years Que's brother Chinh joined the military and fought ardently for the separation of classes. The bourgeoisie had property taken away from them, and Chinh desired the rise of the proletariat. A party loyalist, Chinh forbid Que to associate with Ton, the man she loved, because his family owned a few rice paddies. Ton's sister Tam never forgot this treatment of her family, and assisted Que in reuniting the couple. Although Ton later died in shame at the expense of Chinh, Que gave birth to Hang and raised her in poverty in Hanoi.

In Vietnam blood runs thicker than water. Even though Chinh indirectly killed Ton, Tam loves Hang with her whole heart because she is the family's lone descendant. She lives impoverished so that one day Hang can honor the family by attending university and eventually escaping from Hanoi altogether. As Tam would do anything for Hang, Que feels the same toward Chinh and his two children. In spite of living as proud communists by choice, Que feels it her duty to provide for his family. This loyalty creates conflict between her and Tam and Hang as well, resulting in Hang living a fractured childhood through adolescence.

While writing of impoverished conditions in post war Vietnam, Huong provides luscious prose in her descriptions of the village where Tam lives as well as Hang's constant feelings of despair. In this country, however, food is the universal language and no matter how poor a family is, they still provide to feed their family. Huong describes all Vietnamese delicacies in detail down to the time and effort it takes to prepare the festive dishes. Whether for the Tet, a banquet, or an afternoon tea between neighbors, food plays a prominent role in Vietnamese' lives. Even when Hang has nothing and almost is forced to give up her studies, she still manages to eat scrumptious dishes as fried beef and cabbage or rice noodles and cauliflower. While reading these sections, I pained for Hang but knew she would survive because she would always have a hearty meal to eat.

Paradise of the Blind is the second book I read by a Vietnamese author this year but the first to take place in Vietnam. From the west we only learn of one side of the country's story, not necessarily the one that Huong paints in her novels. Through her use of vivid prose and adept translation by Nina McPherson, Duong Thu Huong has made her readers aware of the injustices that occur between classes in post war Vietnam. Although today the country may finally be on its feet, this was not the case for many year. Huong's novels are important reads, and I look forward to reading the other two books in her trilogy.

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young Vietnamese woman lives a life of hardship during the time of the US war in Vietnam. Her hardships are of several varieties. First is daily survival in the sense of getting enough food and trying to repair the leaky metal roof on her mother’s hut. Her house is a tarpaper shack in a neighborhood with open sewers where men in the street pee on the walls.



A second complication comes from her complex family relationships. Her uncle (her mother’s brother) was a SOB who drove her father out of town and out of their lives during a period of Maoist-type land reform and village political purges. Yet her mother still fawns over this brother, now a government official, helping out him and his family, as if THEY needed help.

A third complication is her relationship with her father’s mother, whom she calls Auntie. Obviously Auntie hates her mother’s brother for what he did to her son. But she has become a wealthy woman and dotes on her niece creating tension between the young woman and her mother. Her aunt wants her niece to go to college in Vietnam but instead, the young woman chooses to go work in a Russian factory and live in a dormitory setting with other young Vietnamese women, sending money back home to her mother.

The young woman takes a job in Russia working in a factory. Her nasty uncle, now living in Moscow, continues to complicate her life. The story is structured so that it begins with her time in Moscow as she reflects back on her childhood traumas and experiences. Not knowing, not seeing (the title) is a theme and we often read of blind men, blind beggars, singing blind groups, even blind dogs.

We read this: “Unhappiness forges a woman, makes her selfless, compassionate.” This reminds me of a quote from another recent review I posted of Dancing in the Mosque, set in Afghanistan: “Pain and grief adorn a woman."



There is good writing that gives us a strong feel for the landscape: “It was a picturesque little town, quiet, tranquil. The houses seemed to flow out of the hillside, each one different from the next, exuding a timeless softness, like the memory of an old love. The walls shone white in the feeble light of the moon. Along the roads, rows of trees swayed, filtering the golden light over the summit of the hills. A purplish haze hung over the valley below. The main road scattered into smaller roads, which snaked and then vanished into the infinite green.”

In Moscow the young woman wonders why other people seem to have it easier. She sees young Japanese students there who seem to her happy and carefree: “What did these people have that we didn’t have? Hundreds of faces rose in my memory: those of my friends, people of my generation, faces gnawed with worry, shattered faces, twisted, ravaged, sooty, frantic faces.… Our faces were always taut, lean with fear. The fear that we might not be able to pay for food…”

Another quote I liked: “A rich man loves to work, a poor man loves to eat.”

When she was 20 years old the author (b. 1947) was one of the first women to volunteer in a combat role when China attacked North Vietnam in 1979. She wrote a novel during a period of liberalization in Vietnam in 1989, but by 1991 the tide had turned and not only was her book banned but she was imprisoned for six months. She is quoted as saying “I never intended to write. It just happened, because of the pain.”



The author has seven novels translated into English. A blurb says that Paradise of the Blind was the first Vietnamese novel published in the US in English. If that is accurate, that is amazing because that wasn't until 1993! Of course hundreds of novels have been published from the American perspective of the Vietnam War.

Top photo of Vietnamese landscape from dailymail.co.uk
Shany town in Ho Chi Minh City from myvietnamnews.blogspot.com
The author from vietnamlit.org

[Revised 5/15/23]

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paradise seems to be something we are only able to see when we have lost it.

As long as we are in the garden Eden, we are blind, following dictated rules and repressive authority. Losing paradise makes us seeing, knowing, understanding human beings, but also lost souls, people on the run, disoriented and disintegrated.

Re-establishing paradise, however, means willingly blinding us. Is that a reasonable price to pay for "heavenly" unity and order?

"Paradise of the Blind" feels oddly familar to me despite the exotic setting, in a Vietnam shaken by Communist reorganisations. It is a political tale of revolutionary zeal and its brutal effect on individual people and their hopes and dreams. At the same time, it is the story of a clash between tradition and modernity, and of human failure to adjust to changing times and mindsets.

The old way of worshipping ancestors and living for the honour and wealth of the family is put in contrast with the ideology of Moscow-ruled communism. As so often in history, the women who try to make the family survive are the self-sacrificial sufferers of the swinging political and social pendulum.

Hang, the young protagonist of the story, is stuck between warring factions of the family, representing different ways of interpreting a "good" life, but one thing is common for all her demanding relatives: they see her life and her choices as theirs, and she remains the property of the family regardless of whether she commits to the communist doctrine of her uncle or to the traditional family values of her aunt. Her life is owned by others, and she has to engage in what she herself sees as a kind of "grotesque hide-and-seek" to please others.

My relief was almost physical when I saw her walk away from the situation and escape her blind paradise in the end:

"I can't squander my life tending these faded flowers, these shadows, the legacy of past crimes."

By leaving the suffocatingly beautiful setting of her paradise of the blind behind, Hang completes her training as a seeing human being and is ready to enter the stage of the world. You can't sacrifice existence to honour the past, is her message.

And I could not agree more. Paradise is a prison. Let's break out and live!

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seem to be on a run of novels at the moment with settings in East Asia, in this case Vietnam. Reading background on the author, it seems she was born near Hanoi in 1947 and was a longstanding communist who eventually became disillusioned with the country’s poverty and injustice.

The novel was first published in 1988 and the lead character, a young woman called Hang, is 20 and living in the USSR as an “exported worker”. She receives a message to visit her maternal uncle, Chinh, who is in Moscow. Hang’s location within the USSR is not specified but travelling to Moscow involves a very long train journey. Hang has a complicated relationship with her uncle and doesn’t want to make the trip, but family loyalty compels her. Confucian concepts of family duty and respect for ancestors play a big part in this novel. The train trip is used as a device during which Hang looks back on her childhood and her family’s past.

Chinh is a former Viet Minh guerrilla and communist cadre who wrecked Hang’s parents’ marriage by denouncing her father’s family as “landlords”. In practice this meant they owned a few acres of rice paddy and occasionally hired labourers. Hang’s father was forced to flee. Despite this her mother remained devoted to Chinh as the “male heir” of her family, keeping herself in poverty to provide for Chinh and his two sons. Hang observes:

“I realized she had a mission now, a new source of happiness: to serve the needs of my little cousins. How intoxicating it can be, self-sacrifice.”

Meanwhile Hang has a paternal aunt, Tam, for whom Hang is the embodiment of all the hopes of her family, following their ruin. As might be imagined, this dichotomy leaves Hang in a difficult situation.

The desperate poverty of Vietnam during the 1960s-1980s is another feature of the book, and how such poverty leaves a person with no dignity. One day in the Soviet Union, Hang sees a group of young Japanese tourists. She muses on the accident of fate that led these Japanese to be born in a peaceful and prosperous country, and considers their confident and happy faces, comparing them to her own and to the faces of other “exported workers”.

“Our faces were always taut, lean with fear. The fear that we might not be able to pay for food, or not send it in time, the fear of learning that an aged father or mother had passed away while waiting for our miserable subsidies, the fear that some embassy official just might not…”

“And there was the shame, the self-loathing, in the mirror of another’s gaze. Life as one endless humiliation.”

A family saga, but also a window into Vietnamese culture and society, and a portrait of people forced to live under a stress that causes many, though not all, to lose their humanity.

I think I will read more of this author’s work.

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/5
Con esta lectura he terminado por todo lo alto con el #marzoasiático ♥
'Los paraísos ciegos' nos narra la infancia de Hàng en una aldea en Vietnam un tiempo después de la guerra, en la que el comunismo arruinó la vida de muchas familias.
La novela está contada con mucho lirismo, melancolía y nostalgia, hace hincapié en la descripción de los paisajes deteniéndose en la belleza de ese mundo tan pobre, de su cultura y tradiciones.
La historia sigue a Hàng entre esa pobreza, el trabajo y los momentos de breve opulencia, entre su madre y su tía, dos mujeres terriblemente infelices que son el centro de su vida.
Es una historia preciosa que me ha dejado con muchísimas ganas de seguir leyendo más sobre Vietnam y desde luego seguiré buscando libros de esta maravillosa autora recién descubierta :)

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has the feel of a memoir. The narrator recounts her story growing up in Vietnam in the decades after the war, a story that begins years before her birth. The war fractured lives, families and communities. As those fractures healed, they often did so in ways that created new stress fractures, even breaking some. There is a blindness, a refusal to see, among the generation that lived through the war. Some are blinded by anger or grief, some by their insistence on clinging to ancient social rules, some myopically focused on revolutionary ideals that had long been proven stillborn. As a result, they are like flies feudally flapping their wings in amber, slowly petrifying. I know little about Vietnamese culture or life in the decades immediately after the war. But, this author brought the characters and world to such vivid life that I understood and sympathized with these people. 4.5 stars

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Banned in Vietnam Paradise of the Blind is an emotionally charged, elegant and fruitful novel. Dương Thu Hương charts the troubled life of Hang as she navigates her current life as a textile worker in a Russian factory with the disillusioned experiences of her childhood in Hanoi. Dương's writing is spiritually evocative, filled with joy and rambling descriptions of rural Vietnam life, eschewing the focus away from fanatical politics [and thankfully, the Vietnam War] in favour for a quiet yet sophisticated meditation on culture. Culture through cuisine is the novel's main weapon: the memories of Hang come alive with street vendors clamouring to sell che sweet pudding, whilst the omnipresence of various meat pàtés remind us of the French culinary and colonial influence. Dương provides a glossary filled mostly with indexes on food and spices, fitting for a novel which spends so many pages dedicated to the idea of food and consumption. On one level this national obsession with food - and at parts Paradise of the Blind does read a little like a cookbook - digs at a deeper level the various political implications of Confucianism, Communism and the land-reforms which wreak havoc upon the characters of the book.

'Along the roadside, purple and white bauhinia flowers spread like a quilt of blossoms over the peaks of the trees, as far as the eye could see. Once, I walked into this forest, plunging myself into its sea of purple flowers. At dusk it was a terrifying, unnerving beauty, like a revelation.'

I cannot help but wonder if readers vaguely exoticise Dương's novel, the first Vietnamese novel translated into the US which offers a glimpse of a country that many people, me included, are relatively oblivious about. Vietnam is not such a paradise after all but both achingly wild and tender and, as Dương builds up in a rather unsubtle manner, is capable of terrible tragedies. However wipe away Dương's top layer of redolently sensuous language and the true heart of the novel reveals itself. Hang's life is not simply one of oppression, and nor is Communism the inherent evil, as some of the GR reviews seem to proclaim, but Hang is a victim of Vietnam's multiplicity. Hang grows up in an environment which is fiercely matriarchal, and she is caught between the affections of her mother and her Aunt Tam; both are at odds with each other but end up remarkably similar. It is Aunt Tam, a victim of the brutal land reforms, who in her rejection of what she supposes are old-fashioned traditions in favour for perspiration, who amasses a fortune of opulent excess, allowing her to dote upon Hang, essentially commodifying the last link in her blood-line. Blood runs thicker than water and phó in the novel and family-blood becomes the most valuable asset of all; only through Aunt Tam's double-edged generosity is Hang able to eat, to live and to study - in total, become a woman. Of course, in retaliation Hang's mother starts to buy her way into the even more austere lives of Hang's nieces. Thus Dương presents a tragic cycle of sacrifice where each female figure sacrifices herself in favour for piety. Such dedication, Dương portrays, is not merely integral to Vietnamese cultural - manifesting through food - but is as restrictive when paired alongside the Communist measures of the land reforms.

At the end of the day, both ideologies are various forms of charity. The characters within Paradise of the Blind all act as tradesmen, either literally as vendors and smugglers, or as metaphysical businessmen in the act of bartering cultural value. Such value Dương explicitly projects through the novel itself in its exuberantly colourful descriptions of Hanoi's various markets and banquets; she places a value on the reading experience, allowing us to buy into the book's exotic nature in the same way Hang buys herself into a stable class structure. However, the book towards the end tears down the illusion of idealised romanticism: beauty, Dương suggests, only exists from a certain vantage-point of safety. In her youth, Hang finds herself enraptured by the duckweed floating on a pond whilst by the rocks a woman is washing her dirty, worn feet in the waters, and asks Hang what is so special about duckweed. Such significance, especially cultural, becomes in the end criticised and exploited by Dương. Hang in realising this must ask why she must follow tradition [and give up her education to become an 'exported worker']? To what extent is one's identity tied up to culture and home? The bloodlines which connect Hang travel through time. Paradise of the Blind is set in Hang's twenties as a series of reminisces and flashbacks as she takes a train to Moscow; it is her anchoring of the past which haunts her now. Hang is not the only character indebted to the past: Aunt Tam, although outwardly a independent woman, is a slave to the patriarchal memory of her dead brother, a legacy which she tries to live through via Hang. Through her job as the storyteller - regaling her hardships - she forces those stories upon Hang, stories which are laced with judgement, morality and eventually become a form of punishment and commodification. The historical link to the land reforms, to the struggles of the characters, act as bonds [both economical and metaphysical] within the story in order to tie together the narrative. At first mildly disconcerting Dương weaves an excellent job of placing stories within stories, seamlessly shifting from the present to the past, if perhaps a little repetitively.

However the novel is not merely a dreamy recollection of reconciling the past and present, but a journey through literal distances too. Hang's predicament and immigration to Russia is unique in its story-telling, and historically significant, but not much touched upon by Dương, acting instead only as a gateway to the juicier narrative of Hanoi. It is the tension between Hang in Moscow which becomes one of the few highlights of the novel: in Moscow the environment is the complete antithesis to Hanoi in its cold masculinity and plain weather. The dorm-room which Hang visits, populated by vaguely menacing male students, drives the message home quite literally about Hang's education which was once in her grasp but is now momentarily lost. Hope, as always, is present and she returns to Vietnam one last time to bury the dual shackles which have so far oppressed her; the novel's conclusion reads a little artificial and mawkish but there could be no other end for a novel about empowerment. Alluring prose finds itself on every page, however it should be read bittersweetly in favour against the wider problems the novel drops in on. Thus Paradise of the Blind comes full circle, with neither Moscow nor Hanoi as the paradises which they so seemed, and Hang dreaming of a vague and uncertain future, but one blinded with hope regardless.

[Thảo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lần đầu tôi đọc văn của Dương Thu Hương là khi đọc cuốn Đỉnh cao chói lọi. Thành thực mà nói thì cuốn đấy rất chán, hoặc là do bà viết thiên về ám chỉ chính trị nhiều quá, hoặc là tôi bị ám ảnh bởi những hồi kèn trống oang oang mở đường cho cuốn sách ấy nhiều quá. Văn chương đọc mà sặc mùi chính trị lộ thiên thì rất đáng buồn. Rồi hôm nay, trong khi ngồi vơ vẩn ngước nhìn lên xuống tủ sách gia đình, mắt tôi chạm đến mấy tựa sách của Dương Thu Hương thời còn chưa bị cấm xuất bản ở Việt Nam và có lẽ do duyên đến, tôi quyết định đọc Những thiên đường mù.

Những thiên đường mù kể về cô gái tên Hằng xuất khẩu lao động sang Liên Xô đang trên đường đi thăm ông cậu bị ốm ở Matxcơva. Đường xa, trời lạnh lại đang ốm, Hằng chìm vào những kí ức xa xưa từ thời bố mẹ cô bị chia lìa, rồi gia đình ông cậu, cô Tâm chị của bố… Cuốn sách tái hiện lại cả một thời kì từ làng quê đến thành thị, từ số phận người nông dân bị đấu tố đến anh tuyên huấn có vợ chỉ học cấp 2 đã thao thao giảng về triết học duy vật.

Những thiên đường mù thông qua số phận của ba người đàn bà để hàm ẩn thông điệp của mình. Ấy là cô Tâm, người phụ nữ xinh đẹp có học bị đấu tố là con nhà địa chủ rồi từ tay trắng gầy dựng cơ nghiệp, quên cả tuổi xuân để trả thù, một lòng chăm lo cho đứa cháu – hậu duệ duy nhất còn sót lại của nhà họ Trần; ấy là bà Quế, có chồng bị chính em vợ đấu tố phải bỏ trốn, sinh con mang tiếng chửa hoang, bỏ làng bỏ quê đi mưu sinh, bị em trai hắt hủi xong lại hết lòng hi sinh để lo cho hai đứa cháu – hậu duệ còn sót lại của nhà họ Đỗ; ấy là Hằng, từ bé đến lớn sống trong sự bảo bọc của cô Tâm và mẹ Quế, bị quá khứ vùi lấp trong muôn vàn kí ức hư ảo và trách nhiệm nặng nề. Tuy nhiên, cần nói rằng, xã hội mà Dương Thu Hương tái hiện lại trong tiểu thuyết của mình dù mang nặng vẻ u ám của hiện thực nhưng đó trước hết là cái hiện thực đã lọc qua lăng kính chủ quan của bà.

Dương Thu Hương đã nhắc đi nhắc lại trong tác phẩm của mình hình ảnh “thiên đường mù”. Thiên đường mù ấy là cái hạnh phúc tạm bợ trong phút chốc, là thứ ảo vọng bèo bọt ngắn ngủi mà ngỡ sâu xa. Ông cậu Chính xây dựng thiên đường mù trên cái tài đánh tiết canh cho thủ trưởng để thăng quan tiến chức, cô Tâm xây dựng thiên đường mù bằng vật chất vòng vàng quanh đứa cháu để trả thù quá khứ bi phẫn, bà Quế xây dựng thiên đường mù bằng cách dốc thân còm cõi để nuôi lấy miệng ăn trong gia đình em trai mặc cho mọi sự khinh khi. Tôi có cảm tưởng, Dương Thu Hương đã rải đầy những thiên đường mù như thế khắp các trang sách để dựng nên một thứ không khí bấp bênh, nhờn nhợn và buồn hiu buồn hắt như thương hại lấy những phận người trong guồng quay sân si thù hận.

Dù vậy, điều đọng lại trong tôi sau khi đọc sách lại không phải hình ảnh “thiên đường mù” ấy mà là câu bà Quế nói với chị chồng :

“Em xin chị, em lạy chị, oán thù chỉ nên cởi đừng nên buộc…”


Kết truyện, Hằng quyết định bán hết gia sản cô Tâm để lại cho mình và dứt áo ra đi. Cuối cùng là hình ảnh phi trường với những chuyến bay cất cánh và hạ cánh. Hằng đã từ chối xây tiếp những vách thành của thiên đường mù nọ, cô đang cố lần cởi từng nút thắt thít chặt số phận đã bủa vây mình. Nhưng với mật độ dày và nặng sự u ám nhà văn đã lèn trong từng câu chữ suốt thiên truyện, thực khó để thắp lên cái hi vọng giải thoát vào giây phút tận cùng. Điều này khiến những hình ảnh cuối, những tư tưởng cuối trở nên kịch và khó lòng thuyết phục người đọc tin vào tương lai hứa hẹn của Hằng. Cũng có thể, cô nói vậy mà cuối cùng không làm được vậy, như mẹ Quế của cô năm xưa nói về sự cởi bỏ oán thù mà rốt cuộc vẫn bị nó vùi chết, thẫm sâu ở quán nước ven đường và tình cốt nhục đã hoen mờ trước ánh sáng của mớ tiền xu bạc cắc…

Thảo Dương/Chiễm Phong (http://readingcafe.wordpress.com)

[Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mientras la joven Hang viaja en tren hacia Moscú, se remonta a sus recuerdos de su vida en Vietnam.
En esos recuerdos va surgiendo el dolor de haberse criado sin su padre (y el misterio que rodea su desaparición), el fuerte apego con su madre, y la aparición en un momento de su tía paterna Tam, una mujer de muy buena posición económica.

La novela transcurre en medio de las precariedades económicas, alternadas con notables banquetes, en el que se pone mucho cuidado en la descripción de las comidas, todas muy inusuales para la dieta occidental, y por momentos parece ser un tratado culinario. Y por sobre todo la motivación del sacrificio, el deber y del honor

"Yo lo había comprendido. Tenía una una misión, cubrir las necesidades de los sobrinos. Había una nueva felicidad. Qué embriagador es sacrificarse".

En el trasfondo, se perciben algunos abusos de la reforma comunista y algunos detalles de la corrupción que trajo aparejada.

Me costó identificarme con los personajes de la novela, y con los motivos que los llevan a tomar sus decisiones; tal vez se deba a problemas de traducción, o simplemente a las grandes distancias culturales.

La autora, al momento de la publicación de esta obra fue considerada, junto a Phạm Thị Hoài autora de La mensajera de cristal, (leída en 2016) como representantes de la nueva literatura vietnamita.
Pham, progresivamente crítica del gobierno, fue censurada y encarcelada, y en 2006 logró radicarse en Francia.

PD junio'21: La traducción del vietnamita sería un ambiguo "Cielos ciegos"; el título en inglés Paradise of the blind (El paraíso de los ciegos), me parece más apropiado que el título en castellano.

[Repellent Boy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5. Con esta historia llena de nostalgia, Doung Thu Houng nos transporta a su querida Vietnam. Nuestra protagonista nos narrará la historia de su vida, empezando por la de sus padres. Estos se verán obligados a separarse a causa de la Reforma agragaría que vivió Vietnam en aquella época (que me suena comparable a Revolución cutural china) donde el comercio y el pequeño comercio era indigno y contrario al partido.

Creo que es de esas novelas que se disfrutan poquito a poquito, enamorándose de Hang irremediablemente y empatizando con ella desde el principio. Es una historia dura, llena de crítica hacía la guerra, el machismo, el abuso del poder de las autoridades. También la autora refleja muy bien el amor que siente hacia su país, a través de los ojos de Hang, que amando profundamente su país, decide marcharse a causa del caos que hay en él. Éste le impide avanzar como mujer. Como persona.

En definitiva, mi segundo acercamiento a la literatura vietnamita ha sido bastante agradable. Leeré más de la autora pronto. Buena opción para adentrarse en el mundo asiático y descubrir la grandeza que tienen para ellos las pequeñas cosas.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this was life, this strange muddle, this flower plucked from a swamp.

This book shows up on both the 500 GBBW and the 1001 BBYD lists: why, I do not know. Unlike the usual denizens of the latter, this is a little less white and male and self-titled as apolitical, and while the former was less boring, its collection of women of color in translation is minuscule, with this the most likely being its only representative from Vietnam. One must point out the fact that the 500 GBBW was compiled in '91 and Paradise of the Blind, the first novel from VIetnam to be published in the US as declaimed by the cover, was published in 1988, and the slow pace of translations today doesn't bode well for the amount published in the US marketplace in those three years back then. I must also admit to having read a mere two pieces of Vietnamese lit including this one, both of which were by this author. As such, the usual tug of war between honest evaluation of quality literature and a rare breed mounted upon the establishment's wall is more overt here, as it is with its fellow lone representatives of time and place such as So Long a Letter and The Prostitute and Sultana's Dream. I personally like this work, but it's always good to bear in mind how the status quo fuels itself on the fresh blood of diversity while minimizing the reader's incentive to follow said criminally brief diversity off the beaten track.

I understand something, perhaps for the first time: In every life, there must come a moment when what is most sacred, most noble, in us evaporates into thin air. In a flash of lucidity, the values we have honored and cherished reveal themselves in all their poverty and vulgarity, as they had to this girl. From this moment, no one is spared.

A few of my students have a world history exam approaching, and one of them asked why communism was so vilified. In addition to discussion of various body counts (in case anyone was wondering, they are comparable, if not exceeded, by those amassed under capitalism in its various guises of colonialism, slavery, and the like), I gave her the example of a world where engineers and doctors made the same as teachers and sanitation workers, and asked her whether parents would be inclined to shell out as much as they do for corporate tutoring if there was no return investment. She said no, and that was that. Obviously this is a dangerous simplification, and PotB (ableist title that it is) is but one of many, if one of the more holistic, books and experiences one would have to engage with to get a grip on communism, socialism, and the capitalism I've been functioning obtusely under for the better part of a quarter of a century.

You say our dances are decadent. But haven't you done some dancing yourself? Invisible dances, infinitely more decadent than ours?...It's the dance of the overlords after they've finished laying out traps for their enemies, after they've pandered to the powers that be, as they near their prize: a job with power and all the perks. It's the night before they kill the fatted calf, when they sit sucking their water pipes, rolling cigarettes, waiting for daybreak. Waiting for their consecration. Their minds, undoubtedly, were dancing at the time.

While there are those who hate the idea of undermining of capitalism for the sake of keeping billions of dollars out of circulation so that others may starve, there is the simple fact that the social web keeps millions alive, and no movement can be considered a necessary revolution if any of those with disabilities or neuroatypicalities or economic disadvantages are viewed as a practical sacrifice for the fit and able when the system comes crashing down. Hang, the main character, benefits from communism defeating capitalism in the Vietnam war: haphazardly, ironically, and bitterly, every piece of riches accumulated through broken hearts, abused traditions, and bourgeoisie materialism in the land ruled by the proletariat. Despite this, there is food, and culture, and friendship, and when all is said and done, a perfect socioeconomic system doesn't yet exist, which means work still needs to be done. If you take this novel as one that rejects communism wholesale, you've acquired the task of putting your money where your mouth is and setting fire to public schools, public libraries, public bathrooms, and any other place that does not exist merely to turn a profit. The revolution doesn't have a solutions manual,and the fact that it hasn't happened yet is no reason to bury one's head in the sand.

How intoxicating it can be, self-sacrifice.

This wasn't as powerful as Novel Without a Name, but as far as borderline conventional narratives go, it has enough sensory detail and tackling of the deeply difficult questions of life and how one must live it for me to rest content. The biographical note has informed me that this is one of a somewhat trilogy, so while I really do need to branch out from this single author Vietnamese lit show, I'll be keeping an eye out for "Beyond Illusions" and "Fragments of Lost Life". As said before, this work has broken into the status quo of the Neo-Euro estimation of lit enough for others to catch wind and follow their reading sensibilities to unfamiliar landscapes. For every ten that leave with their district socioeconomic gods outside of capitalism, one may leave with the questions of why and how and where do we go from here. Much to my chagrin, I still haven't lost my attraction to the Nobel Prize for Lit, so Hương's name is one I'll be putting into the running.

Little Sister, you must understand, even if it hurts. Your uncle is like a lot of people I've known. They've worn themselves out trying to re-create heaven on earth. But their intelligence wasn't up to it. They don't know what their heaven is made of, let alone how to get there. When they woke up, they had just enough time to grab a few crumbs of real life, to scramble for it in the mud, to make a profit—at any price. They are their own tragedy. Ours as well.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whatever I was expecting from this I didn't get it. The author was a political dissident, but this was not strongly anti-communist. Some readers have shelved this as feminist, but I didn't read anything that would fit that description. What I read of Hang's mother and aunt also misses the GR description, although I admit there is some of it here.

I didn't find good writing nor good characterization and there was a complete absence of plot. What was there for me to hang my hat on? Well, there was lots of food. Rice, of course, but noodles and fish and beef and chicken, also and most especially descriptions of sweet things filled page after page.

Despite the foregoing, this wasn't absolutely awful. It simply sits toward the bottom of my 3-star group.

[Quân Khuê · Rating 4 out of 5]

Đọc lại mà như đọc lần đầu, vì lần đầu đọc khi còn quá nhỏ. Không như nhiều cuốn khác đọc lại vài trang chỉ muốn vứt, Những thiên đường mù đọc lại vẫn hay. Văn chị Hương thật sự rất đẹp.

[Huy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuốn đầu tiên của Dương Thu Hương mình đọc và cảm thấy thật sự bất ngờ, văn thật sự rất đẹp và u uẩn. Đây cũng là lần đầu tiên mình đọc một cuốn tiểu thuyết viết về cách mạng ruột đất (không khác cách mạng văn hóa của Trung Quốc là bao) nên không ngần ngại cho 5 sao vì quá thích.

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vietnam's "Clear Light of Day" (Anita Desai, India). This book, however, was banned in Vietnam. And it made me hungry.

Like "Clear Light of Day", this novel is a family drama which women writers, like Duong Thu Huong and Anita Desai, seem to write exceptionally well. But what is more remarkable here is that Duong Thu Huong isn't really a novelist. She is a professional screenwriter. She said she never intended to write novels. "It just happened, because of the pain," she said in an interview.

The pain, indeed. Hang (most likely the author writing here semi-autobiographically), a young woman in her early 20's, never knew her father Ton. He died when she was just a baby.

Ton belonged to a landed family at the time Vietnam became communist. The brother of Hang's mother, her Uncle Chinh, was a petty, local communist tyrant who had a myopic view of the Vietnamese society: the good guys are the proletariat and those who own lands or have servants are the enemies of the people. He persecuted Ton's family despite his (Ton's) marriage with his own sister. Shamed, Ton fled and met an untimely death. He left a sister--Hang's Aunt Tam--who suffered a lot too. She viewed Chinh as an assassin and responsible for all their sufferings.

Eventually, some of the "errors" of the communist rule were "rectified." Aunt Tam was given back her family's properties. She prospered. She loved Hang dearly because Hang looked exactly like her deceased brother and, being unmarried herself, she considered Hang as the perpetuation of her family's blood and memory. She never forgave Chinh, however, for her brother's death and their family's suffering. Hang's mother, on the other hand, never ceased to love her only brother Chinh despite what the latter did to her husband Ton who was her great and only romantic love (she never remarried). Hang hates her Uncle Chinh but tries to show him respect, even outward affection, for the sake of her mother whom she love above all others. Her mother does not hate her Aunt Tam (with whom Hang had grown attached) but resents the latter's hatred for her brother Chinh. This strange mixture of love, hate, respect, contempt, reverence, tragedy and triumph made for an exciting read.

Why the hunger? Because the Vietnamese have this reverence for food. They sometimes express their emotions through food. Here, all throughout the varied dramatic moments there are always passages about food, glorious Vietnamese food (Anthony Bourdain, once asked what cuisine he remembers most and looks forward returning to, said "Vietnamese"). Food here is either being sold, cooked, prepared, eaten or just plainly lying there, exuding its aroma (which you can smell while reading, I swear!). At around page 100 of the novel I could not control myself anymore and had to eat three dishes at the Pho Bac, a popular Vietnamese restaurant in a nearby mall. Cost me a fortune, maybe the price of around six secondhand books, but the urge proved irresistible.

Yummy!

[Chinook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m so glad that the 1001 list lead me to this book, since I was otherwise unaware of it.

The writing is wonderful. The author really drew me back to the sights, sounds and smells of Hanoi - I could at times powerfully recall my trip there.

This book covers not just the subject of the Vietnamese war and its aftermath, but also the export workers to Tussia, a subject I know little about. I think in the West we are so used to the narrative of immigration to the West, especially to the US, and we tend not to be very aware of immigration to other places, so it was good to discover a novel that covers that ground.

But the strength of this book lies for me in the family relationships and particularly the look at what the loss of family members does to the relationships with the few still alive. Watching Aunt Tam and Hang’s mother trying to hold close their remaining family in ways that pushed people away and wanting to hate Uncle Chinh but then being shown why he too was deserving of sympathy made this an exceptional read.

[Andrew]

Like most dissident writers, Duong Thu Huong spends a lot of time on the day-to-day pettiness and miseries of the new regime. And yet it doesn't read as a political diatribe at all, largely thanks to the lyrical writing – elegant depictions of landscape and the scents of food set the tenor for the book rather than the humiliations and setbacks of the characters. And Hang, the focal point of the story, is a remarkable character, as she tries, simply, to make her own way amid the back alleys of Hanoi, and then in the grim dormitories of the USSR in the dark, leaden Brezhnev-Andropov years. Really, it has more in common with an old '50s existentialist novel than any of the normal range of exile and dissident literature (the Solzhenitsyns, the Bulgakovs, etc.). Read this alongside Duong's Novel Without a Name-- that one for the large-scale scope, this one for the intimacies.

[Pauline Van etc. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thu Huong Duong is one of Vietnam’s most celebrated writers but also a controversial one because of her criticism of the Communist party. In « Les paradis aveugles », she follows the life of a young Vietnamese lady who struggles with her individuality in an environnement where family obligations and also oppressive communist inspired policies prevail.

I enjoyed her descriptions of the people and landscapes of Vietnam, she writes in a very poetic and visual way. She particularly rendered the life of the street vendors in a vivid way. She also brilliantly tackled the errors of the Communist government in the newly independent country of Vietnam (bad land reform, humiliations of certain people, corruption) and the frustration of the youth born after the wars.

Her quest to live a fulfilling life while maintaining good ties with her family was touching and certainly a universal theme that could interest all readers, whether or not they want to learn about Vietnam.

[Rosa María · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://misgrandespasiones-rosa.blogs...

Cuando ves recomendado un libro y desde ese mismo momento no se te va de la cabeza. Y buscas como poder comprarlo y ves que lleva descatalogado años. No lo hay a un precio asequible de segunda mano. Después buscas por la biblioteca y piensas, es imposible que lo tengan, es un libro raro. Pero, providencialmente descubres que una de las pocas bibliotecas que dispone de él es la tuya. ¡Qué alegría, tener una biblioteca disponible llena de tesoros!


Pues sí tuve suerte y en mi biblioteca lo tenían disponible para préstamo. Gracias a ello he podido disfrutar de esta maravillosa novela. Debemos poner en valor el gran tesoro que tenemos en las bibliotecas públicas de este país y ser conscientes de la suerte que tenemos de poder disfrutar de ellas.



Hang es vietnamita y trabaja en la Unión Soviética. Recibe un telegrama de su tío para que acuda urgentemente a Moscú, donde éste parte de la burocracia del régimen socialista que gobierna en Vietnam, se encuentra recibiendo clases para mejorar sus sistemas, ya que se encuentra gravemente enfermo. Así, Hang se embarcará en un largo viaje en tren hacia Moscú donde irá rememorando todos los acontecimientos que le han llevado hasta ese momento.


“Crecí. Miré, vi a esa gente que nos aterrorizaba, como aquel subdirector. No merecían nuestro respeto ni nuestro temor. Decretaban, para nosotros, mil reglamentos, innumerables leyes, a cual más severa, y sin embargo, en la sombra, chapoteaban en la mierda, sin fe ni ley.”



Nos irá mostrando, cómo el amor entre sus padres fue apagado de forma abrupta por su tío, encargado en ese momento de llevar la revolución a su aldea natal una vez concluida la guerra. La posición acomodada de la familia de su padre, hace que, a ojos de la revolución, éste no sea digno para formar parte de la familia de un miembro del régimen, además de ser desposeído de todas sus riquezas.


“Llega siempre un momento en el que, lo que de más sagrado, más noble, más puro hay en nosotros se desvanece como el humo. Valores que hemos venerado y perseguido durante toda nuestra vida, en un relámpago de lucidez revelan su indigencia, su vulgaridad. Nadie puede evitar ese momento terrible, terrorífico.”



Este hecho será clave para el futuro de ambas familias y marcará para siempre las relaciones entre sus miembros. Hang se verá envuelta en esta red de rencores y remordimientos y crecerá junto a su madre pero con la protección y ayuda de la hermana de su padre.



“Una heredad cuyo precio era una vida sin juventud y sin amor. Una victoria surgida de la renuncia a la existencia…”


En la novela se contrapone el valor de la tradición y la familia, frente a la modernidad y los cantos de sirena de la revolución. La historia está carada de una sutil pero a la vez acerada crítica al régimen socialista impuesto en Vietnam desde el fin de la guerra.



Un libro escrito de una manera tan bella y característica como los escritores orientales saben hacerlo.


“La vida me había enseñado el precio del silencio.”

[Lữ Đoàn Đỏ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lần này chỉ vì đọc chứng khoán khô khan quá, khó nuốt trước khi ngủ nên tìm đại 1 cuốn khác để đọc. Cuốn này nghe tới từ lâu rồi, cũng nghe danh Dương Thu Hương từ mấy anh già. Nhưng ngại đọc vì đã hơi sợ sợ những cuốn sách thời u tối. Cuối cùng chọn đại và đọc 1 nửa ban đêm, 1 nửa đọc nốt khi sáng dậy.

Lần nào đọc chủ đề này cũng có gì nghèn nghẹn vì bất công, vì những đau khổ tới phi lý mà con người sẵn sàng hả hê đọa đầy nhau. Tâm vẫn chưa thể an yên và tĩnh lặng được, đọc vẫn sôi sục và căm giận trước những bẩn thỉu trơ trẽn đó. Nhưng cuốn này không đi quá sâu vào sự hằn học căm thù cho 1 thời đã qua mà tập trung vào số kiếp 3 người đàn bà. Nhưng nỗi đau và diễn biến nội tâm của 2 thế hệ. Dương Thu Hương tả cảnh cứ bềnh bồng, hư ảo, rất rất nhiều dòng văn là những khung cảnh hiện ra nói thay cho lòng đang nức nở. Nhưng bản thân lại hơi ghét tả cảnh nhiều, thấy nhiều khi bị thừa dù ngôn từ rất đẹp.

Đồng cảm nỗi đau của những gì họ đã trải qua, nhưng không làm sao hiểu được thế giới quan của họ. Họ quá nặng về thứ gọi là ruột thịt máu mủ, tới mức sẵn sàng quên cả bản thân. 1 người liệu có thể yêu được người khác khi chưa yêu trọn vẹn chính bản thân mình? Gia đình, tổ tiên, máu mủ ruột thịt nhiều khi đeo bám như 1 lời nguyền trọn kiếp. Nhưng tình yêu đó là thật, hy sinh đó là thật. Cứ nhớ lại 1 đoạn đọc trong Shogun - trong tiếng Nhật vốn không có chữ “yêu” (love) vì làm gì còn thứ tình cảm nào cao hơn cả việc từ bỏ sinh mạng của mình cho người đó. Ngôn từ khi đó trở nên thừa thãi. Trong tiếng Việt có từ yêu nhưng rất ít khi được dùng, từ hồi văn hóa phương Tây tràn ngập thì từ này phổ biến hơn. Khi đã “yêu” ngôn từ rất dư thừa.

Có lúc ấn tượng chỉ với 1 vài câu, tâm tư về đứa trẻ không có bố, những đau khổ mà ngoài nó ra không ai hiểu cả. Có lúc lại thấy rất vô lý khi mẹ con xa cách chỉ vì người cậu ruột. Lại có người đàn bà nào bỏ con để thương yêu em ư? Có những việc đã qua, người ta không trả thù nhưng sẽ không bao giờ tha thứ. Đọc xong lại mung lung, những nhân vật trong truyện này đều là cả đời sống vì người khác, lấy người khác là mục tiêu và động lực sống, nhưng sao chẳng thấy ai hạnh phúc cả? Con người rốt lại vẫn phải tìm hạnh phúc ở nơi bản thân mình chứ không thể ở nơi khác được. Và những ngu dốt, độc ác, bất công, tới khi nào sẽ hết hay chẳng bao giờ? Tác phẩm bị cấm xuất bản vì nó dám nói tới những hiện thực mà ai cũng thấy ư?

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one of the five reading groups I attend steers me to a great book I might otherwise not have discovered, I am happy. I forget about all the sappy or stupid books I have read for reading group discussions.

Paradise of the Blind is one of very few novels written by a Vietnamese writer and translated into English. Therefore this story, authored by a Vietnamese woman born in 1947, gives a little known view into life there. It begins when Hang is a ten-year-old girl living with her mother in the Hanoi slums, but goes back and forth in time as she grows to young womanhood and learns the history of her family.

The writing is achingly beautiful as she describes her surroundings both in Hanoi and in the tiny village from which her mother came. Thanks to a glossary of Vietnamese cultural and food items, the author initiates her readers into the spiritual and social rituals of her country. The result is a powerful but sad story of a culture in transition due to having achieved independence from the French and the chaos of creating a workable society along communist principles.

Hang, from her position of a child with a missing father, a grieving and confused mother, an insensitive uncle working for the party and a domineering paternal aunt, grows up with her own conclusions. While she pursues the love of her mother and some form of protection from her aunt, she is quite thoroughly disabused of the spiritual beliefs of her family and rejects the tradition of women who sacrifice themselves for family and particularly men.

Reading Paradise of the Blind made me think of Richard Wright's amazingly perceptive books The Color Curtain and White Man, Listen. Duong Thu Huong's novel reinforced my belief that women represent a force for intelligent and workable change on this mostly insane planet.

[Linh Đan Nguyễn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoài niệm, mặc cảm và định kiến trong ‘Những thiên đường mù’

ĐẶNG ANH ĐÀO

Có thể nói rằng Những thiên đường mù là một câu chuyện dệt bằng những mảnh ký ức trên nền hiện tại.

Chưa hoàn toàn là thời gian đồng hiện - một kỹ thuật du nhập từ phương Tây và sản phẩm của thế kỷ điện ảnh - nhưng kết cấu truyện là sự đan cài, song song của quá khứ và hiện tại, thậm chí hiện tại nhiều khi chỉ là một cái cớ để ký ức tuôn chảy. Nếu tính số lượng trang giấy thì những trang quá khứ dày hơn hiện tại. Cho đến khi với cái chết của người cô (dù người mẹ vẫn còn) thì thật lạ lùng, dĩ vãng đã chấm dứt đối với nhân vật chính: “dĩ vãng chỉ là dĩ vãng”, ký ức của cô gái gặp gỡ hiện tại, và câu chuyện được đóng lại: lần đầu tiên hình ảnh của tương lai xuất hiện với những “giảng đường và phi trường xa xôi” lại cũng chính là lúc kết thúc trang cuối cùng của Những thiên đường mù.

Cả ba người đàn bà án ngữ trong câu chuyện - Hằng nhân vật chính, mẹ Hằng và bà cô tên là Tâm xuất hiện qua lời kể của Hằng - đều mang nặng ký ức. Đối lập lại là một số nhân vật của truyện: mụ Nần, người đàn bà tham ăn khác thường như trong cổ tích và ca dao, hoặc cậu Chính, em trai của mẹ Hằng… Những người này có thể có quá khứ nhưng không có ký ức, hoài niệm: mụ Nần lập tức quên ngay những thứ mụ vừa ăn xong; còn cậu Chính thì dường như chẳng nhớ gì về kinh nghiệm của cải cách ruộng đất khi trở thành thủ trưởng của một cơ quan tuyên huấn ở Hà Nội và để rồi lại quên hết của hai thời kỳ ấy khi thái thịt và “cuốn nem thoăn thoắt”, nấu ăn thuê (?) cho một nhóm thanh niên tại một cái “ốp” nào đó ở Moskva nhân dịp xuất dương du học tận trường AON.

Cũng như tất cả những người đàn bà, điểm sáng quy tụ những nhớ nhung và hoài niệm ở Hằng và bà Quế (mẹ Hằng) cũng như cô Tâm, đó là tình yêu, là hình ảnh một người đàn ông đã tan biến. Và ở đây họ có chung một điểm sáng, dù với mẹ là “một tình yêu không thể đo đếm, không thể tìm kiếm lại”; với Hằng đó là “bố tôi, một tình yêu chưa kịp biết mặt đã chôn vùi trong bùn đất”; và với người cô, đó không chỉ là “niềm trìu mến, tình yêu khắc khoải”, mà là cả một dòng máu, “một phiên bản đã thất lạc”, một quá khứ vĩnh viễn tan biến mà cô đang “xé xác mình ra” để phục hồi lại cho đứa cháu… Cho dù dưới mắt Hằng, đó chỉ là một thiên đường mù, một thiên đường muộn mằn, phung phí.

Trong ba người đàn bà, mẹ của Hằng đã tìm thấy một phần nào quá khứ trong hiện tại, dù không phải là sự tiếp nối hình ảnh người chồng dòng họ Đỗ qua người em trai là cậu Chính và những đứa cháu. Bởi vậy ký ức của bà không dày bằng hai người kia. Còn ký ức của cô Tâm có mỏng hơn Hằng, nhân vật chính đồng thời là người kể chuyện xuất hiện ở ngôi thứ nhất - một lợi thế để kể lại ký ức - nhưng ở cô Tâm nó có phần nặng nề hơn, “kỳ bí” và lạnh lẽo hơn. Quả là bên Hằng, đến con chó già cũng “ngửi thấy lờ mờ cái mùi của quá khứ”.

Nhưng ký ức của Hằng không gắn liền với một huyết thống, một ý chí phục thù, mà đó là cả một thế giới phong phú màu sắc, âm điệu, mùi hương của tuổi ấu thơ tràn ngập thi vị quê hương, vả lại không hoàn toàn là quá khứ. Điều lạ lùng là dường như hiện tại lần đầu tiên trông thấy những bông tuyết, một khúc hát của Pugatrova, hoặc một đám đông dân Nga “hàm chứa cái gì đó trì đọng… một thứ an bình của làn nước hồ không gió bão, không luân chuyển”, l��i cũng không phải là cái gì hoàn toàn mới mà cũng đang biến thành những ký ức đã gợi lại qua những ao bèo, hay một khúc hát Việt Nam từng làm các cô gái đi lao động ở xứ người gào lên vì thương nhớ. Điều đáng chú ý nữa là khi được gặp lại hình ảnh của quá khứ từng khiến Hằng khắc khoải thì nỗi buồn vẫn không chấm dứt: ở cô không bao giờ đạt tới tình trạng thỏa mãn khi nắm bắt được quá khứ trong hiện thực. Bởi thế, tôi tạm gọi đây là hoài niệm về những thiên đường đã mất, có nghĩa là không hẳn về những gì đã có trong thực tế. Bởi quá khứ ở đây dù có là những mảnh của thiên đường, thì vẫn là thiên đường mù, đó không phải là thiên đường mơ ước. Mọi thứ đều đã thấm thía len lỏi “độc tố của nỗi sầu không thể cắt nghĩa”, của định kiến, trì trệ. Triền sông xưa đã “khắc khoải tiếng kêu của lũ chim di trú bay…”; mùi hoa nhài tỏa hương… bên dòng nước tiểu nồng nặc của đám người say bia; khu vườn của thiên đường tuổi trẻ là một khu đường đầy cỏ, hoang dại; âm điệu đầu tiên vọng vào giấc ngủ đứa bé là tiếng rao hàng ời ợi và câu hát gào lên của một kẻ tàn phế tật nguyền, để trang sức, những bông tai của đứa bé gái lên 10 đã “lạnh lẽo băng giá” như “hoa tàn rải xuống nấm mồ hoang”… Và hoài niệm ám ảnh nhất, than ôi, lại là một ao bèo tím ngát hoa nhưng ngưng đọng, mệt mỏi, một thứ nước “làm chết ngạt dễ dàng những kẻ không biết bơi”. Và “ánh mặt trời chói chang nhất cũng chỉ hâm nóng được làn nước mỏng bên trên”.

Bởi tất cả những gì đã đè nặng lên mình trong quá khứ, nên khi tiếp xúc với một cái gì không giống với thế giới của mình, những mặc cảm xuất hiện ở Hằng. Và không chỉ của riêng Hằng, của riêng những cô gái nghèo, những cánh chim di thực, mà ở đây, ngòi bút của Dương Thu Hương đã điểm được phần nào nét tâm trạng của nhiều người Việt Nam hiện nay. Vốn đã bao năm tưởng mình hơn hẳn về mọi mặt - tâm lý đặc biệt của những người ít được phép tiếp xúc - nay có cơ hội so sánh một trạng thái ngược lại xuất hiện. Mặc cảm từ chiều cao của mình, từ thân hình gầy còm, từ sự nghèo khổ âu lo, tới những “cuộc chia ly nham nhở” ở sân bay Nội Bài… Ôi, nỗi đau của chúng ta! Còn cậu Chính có cái diễm phúc là bao giờ cũng thỏa mãn, gần như không mặc cảm, có lẽ bởi chính điều đó đã nói trên ở cậu, không có nhiều ký ức hoài niệm.

Và trong Những thiên đường mù không phải ít định kiến. Riêng ở đây tôi muốn phân biệt định kiến của nhân vật Hằng với định kiến của Dương Thu Hương. Đành rằng nhà văn có quyền xây dựng những nhân vật đầy định kiến. Đành rằng Hằng có quyền nhìn cậu Chính và cải cách ruộng đất từ góc độ cảm nhận ấy. Vả chăng vấn đề xung đột giữa các thế hệ (đại diện qua cậu Chính và Hằng) là vấn đề nóng hổi hiện nay. Cũng không thể nói mọi sai lầm đã qua đều là tất yếu của lịch sử - nếu vậy thì ta đã chẳng nói đến chuyện “sửa sai” và việc nhìn lại quá khứ sẽ là thừa. Và nếu cứ mỗi người tự thấy mình, đặc biệt là ngành mình, cơ quan mình, thế hệ mình v.v… lại bị chạm nọc mỗi khi gặp phải nhân vật phản diện (tương ứng với các thứ trên) trong tác phẩm thì thật khốn khổ cho nhà văn. Song thật sự là ở tác phẩm này, tôi thấy tác giả có chỗ định kiến, “xâu chuỗi”, đơn giản hóa. Có cái gì đó khiên cưỡng, gò ép trong sự hư cấu, những nhân vật nguyên phiến, một chiều như cậu Chính, mợ Thành và hai nông dân cốt cán nọ. Vô phúc cho những ông già, vô phúc cho những kẻ “đã nghiên cứu xong chủ nghĩa Mác-Lênin”, những kẻ mà vinh quang, quá khứ được tính bằng những chục năm tuổi Đảng: họ không thể có một số phận khá hơn trong tiểu thuyết này! Vô phúc cho những kẻ đã được đội cải cách xâu chuỗi! Nhưng có lẽ định kiến đã không cho phép Dương Thu Hương thấy rằng thực tế, nông dân không phải hoàn toàn bị dắt mũi bởi những con người như cậu Chính, mụ Nần, gã Bích. Tôi nghĩ rằng hiện tượng ấy là sự thể hiện một phần bản thân người nông dân, là cái chất của họ. Mặt khác, trong cuộc đời cũng như trong tác phẩm, dù sao, vẫn có những con người xấu hơn cậu Chính, mợ Thành… nhiều. Cái chính là tôi mong được thấy họ bớt cứng đờ vì phải minh họa cho một ác cảm của nhà văn và mong họ cũng tự nhiên như phía “bên kia” của tác giả (như Lãng Tử, như Hằng, như cô Tâm…).

Cảm giác chung toát lên từ cuốn tiểu thuyết là một tâm hồn cuồng nhiệt, sự nhạy bén với những gì đang diễn ra. Sức hấp dẫn ấy đã biện hộ một phần nào cho những cái vội vã, thiếu thận trọng của Dương Thu Hương.

Định kiến của tác giả có thể khiến hư cấu nên những nhân vật thiếu tự nhiên, nguyên phiến. Song những định kiến của các nhân vật như cô Tâm và nhất là Hằng và một số thanh niên khác của câu chuyện không phải không phản ánh một thực trạng hiện nay. Đặc biệt là những mặc cảm nỗi sầu xứ, hoài niệm về một xứ sở cội nguồn, một thiên đường đã mất (vả chăng đã bao giờ thực sự nó tồn tại?) bàng bạc trong suốt tác phẩm niềm mơ ước về những gì tốt đẹp xứng đáng hơn, đó chính là những nét tâm trạng rất sâu sắc không chỉ của những kẻ tha hương (ở bất kỳ phương trời nào) mà còn của nhiều người dân Việt Nam bình thường hiện nay đang sống trên quê hương mình đột nhiên bừng tỉnh, ý thức lại về mình.

Tháng 4 - 1989
Đ.A.Đ
(TCSH39/09&10-1989)

[Rowland Pasaribu]

Paradise of the Blind, by Vietnamese novelist Duong Thu Huong, was first published in Vietnam in 1988 and translated into English in 1993. It was the first novel from Vietnam ever published in the United States and gave American readers authentic insight into the poverty and political corruption that characterized Vietnam under the communist government from the 1950s to the 1980s. Although to most Americans the name Vietnam conjures up images of the Vietnam War, the novel does not concern itself with what the Vietnamese call the American War. It begins in Russia in the 1980s, as Hang, a young Vietnamese woman, travels to Moscow to visit her uncle. As she travels, she recalls incidents from her childhood and adolescence in Hanoi and also tells of life in her mother's village during the communists' disastrous land reform program that took place in the mid-1950s. The novel, which was banned in Vietnam, is essentially the story of three women from two generations whose family is torn apart by a brother who insists on placing communist ideology above family loyalty. The exotic setting and descriptions of the lives of ordinary Vietnamese people in rural and urban areas, combined with the story of young Hang's struggle to forge her own path in life, make for a compelling story.

What sets in motion the multiple individual tragedies of the novel is the attempt by the victorious communists to impose the principles of Marxism on their society. According to Marxism, in every society there is a struggle between the exploiters, the landowners or factory owners (the bourgeoisie), and the exploited, the peasants and the working classes. The so-called land reform that the communists enact in the novel is a catastrophic failure and causes great injustice, "sowing only chaos and misery in its wake," as far as Que's village is concerned. In the village, anyone who owns even a tiny amount of land is declared to be an enemy of the peasantry, even though these small landowners have never exploited anyone. Nonetheless, their property is arbitrarily seized on the orders of Que's brother, Chinh, who thinks only in terms of rigid Marxist theory of class struggle. It is Chinh's adherence to this theory that creates and perpetuates injustice in his own family. Putting ideology above family, he denounces Ton, his own brother-in-law, for the simple reason that Ton's family hired farm labor and, therefore, belong to the exploiting class. Chinh's ideological zeal leads to Ton's exile and death; Que's unhappiness; the lifetime enmity of Ton's sister, Tam; and Hang's loneliness as she grows up without a father.

In addition to applying Marxist theories in a rigid, uniform manner regardless of local conditions or common sense, the Communist Party depicted in the novel is also corrupt. Chinh and his Party hacks use official visits to Russia to make money by trading luxury goods on the black market. The hypocrisy of this is apparent in Moscow when Chinh, who must be well aware of what is going on, hectors his colleagues, telling them they "must behave in an absolutely exemplary manner while you are in this brother country." Not only this, Chinh enriches himself with the perks available to government officials. He owns a new Japanese television set and refuses to sell it even to help raise money for his sister Que, who has just had her leg amputated.

There is also the corruption of Duong, the vice president of Aunt Tam's village, who seizes land to which he has no right. The most savage indictment of hypocrisy of the communist rulers comes from the student Hang refers to as the Bohemian, who harangues Chinh in Khoa's Moscow apartment: "They decreed their thousands of rules, their innumerable edicts, each one more draconian than the last. But, in the shadows, they paddled around in the mud, without faith or law." The Bohemian asserts that what all the Party officials really sought was not the good of the country but power and perks for themselves. Indeed, this is the thread that runs through Chinh's life. For example, he claims to be concerned with his sister's welfare, but the real reason he gets her a job in a factory is that he thinks having a street vendor for a sister is harming his own chances of advancement in the Party. It is ironic that Chinh lectures his sister about putting the interests of her own class above her self-interests, when he himself, under the guise of ideological purity, does the opposite.

The devastation brought about by the land reform, which results in the persecution and eventual death of Hang's father Ton, is that Hang grows up with deep feelings of loneliness, and two families are permanently divided. Mocked by her neighbors for being the fatherless child, Hang looks back on her childhood, seeing it "like a ball kicked across the road, aimless, without any purpose." She lacks any sense of self-worth, a consequence of growing up without a name, not knowing who her father was. She compares herself to "an anonymous weed [that] grows between the cracks of a wall" and also feels a long-lasting sense of humiliation and injustice about her life. One night she dreams she is being beaten, and this feeling of senseless oppression stays with her as she matures. She feels shame at having to associate with her uncle, who has been the cause of such distress to the family. When she visits him in Moscow she refers to her life as "this slow torture, this bottomless sadness." When she is twenty she refers to the "dark circles of misery" she sees under her eyes when she looks in the mirror, and she sees the same unhappiness in an entire generation of young Vietnamese, who see no future for themselves in their society.

The narrator creates a reflective, often sad atmosphere through her poetic descriptions of the landscapes she remembers, both in Vietnam and Russia. She emphasizes the emotional effects these landscapes had on her. One example occurs in chapter 5, when she describes the first snowfall she ever witnessed, in Russia. The beauty of it "pierced my soul like sorrow." This thought prompts her to recall a moment when she was a girl and her mother had taken her to visit a beach; the beauty of the scene at dawn was so extreme it was painful to Hang, perhaps because it was such a contrast to the reality of her impoverished and insecure life.

Particularly evocative are the descriptions of the slum in Hanoi where Hang grew up. She recreates the sights, smells, sounds of her childhood in all their sensory details: the brick hut in which she lived, with its leaky roof; the sounds of the street vendors as they set up their stalls in the morning and their characteristics cries as they hawk their wares; the voice of the crippled man who always sings the same mournful song; the sounds and smells of many families cooking. There are numerous descriptions of food in the novel; food is important to Hang because in her childhood she sometimes goes hungry, and even at the best of times her diet lacks variety. On occasions, too, her mother gets sick because of lack of adequate food. Therefore, as Hang grows up she always notices and records in great detail occasions when food is present in abundance and variety, such as the feasts put on by Aunt Tam. Such occasions, suggesting the resilience and goodness of life, act as a counterweight to the adversity that in general characterizes the lives of the Vietnamese people.

The Paradise of the Blind depicts both the beauty and oppression of life permeated by culture and ideology and shows in its hopeful ending that it is possible for determined individuals to resist and transcend these powerful forces.

[KLC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would call Paradise of the Blind a powerful feminist novel simply for the fact that it’s an authentically told story of women. It mostly focuses on Hang and her relationship with her mother and Aunt Tam. Those relationships are complex. Nothing brings more pain to Hang’s life than her mother, but giving up on a mother who brings you pain is nearly impossible. At the same time, she loves Aunt Tam more than anything, but there's a certain amount of pain that comes with that.

There are several male characters that are equally as important to her life. She even has a character that may or may not turn into a love interest. The great thing about this story is that you don't want to focus on those relationships. You just want to focus on the women. And in the end, Hang's relationships with her mother and aunt are the only ones which are tied up nicely. All the other relationships are left open-ended. (I don't think that's much of a spoiler.)

As much as the powerful message, I loved the whole aesthetic of the story. The entire narrative unfolds naturally. By the time Hang voices how she’s feeling about anything, you’re already feeling it too because you’ve gone through it with her.

The story takes place in Vietnam and Russia. I’ve never been to either, but I could almost feel the air and the energy of whatever setting was presented. The language was poetic but informative. Absolutely gorgeous. While reading, I highlighted several lines throughout the book because they were so beautifully written. I read this twice back to back because I just wanted to live in it. Highly recommend.

[Tom Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seeing the mistakes of the communist government in their Maoist style land reforms as told by the regular every day people was enlightening.

The characters are interesting and you can really see how macro politics can have such a devastating effect on others on the ground.

Some of the absurdity was funny and I thought that although the book started slow it got better as it went on.

[Corinne Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raised in the slums of postwar Vietnam, Hang has lived a simple and hard life with her mother, who runs a tiny stall at a street market. While they find comfort in each other while Hang is young, the past slowly encroaches on them and Hang ends up in the center of a fierce feud between her mother and the sister of her father. Jealousy, family strife and her mother's strange way of satisfying her own need to be needed create havoc for Hang.

When I was trying to tell my husband about this novel, I was struck by the despair, the constant struggle of the Vietnamese peasants, both in the slums and in tiny remote villages. Events between the Communists and the people of Huang's mother's village would change all their lives forever - and everyone is searching for someone to blame. Huong's writing is so haunting, so precise, and it's very clear that she is writing from the perspective of one who has suffered at the hands of the communist party in Vietnam. I can see why this book was banned there - I would imagine that her portrayal of local Communist leaders is not the sort that would bring a government much pleasure.

I enjoyed this book for the flavors and smells - the rich picture it painted of a culture I knew virtually nothing about. It's politically charged, to be sure, and old and new ways often struggled to coexist. The narrative style made it a slow read for me, though, it jumped back and forth in time a lot. I think it could have been put together in a way that was easier for the reader, but I wonder if part of that is just a cultural preference. Read this book for a true sense of life in a Vietnam of not-so-long-ago, and brace yourself for a bitter but beautiful road.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) got a copy of this book after reading The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb, who cited this book as an inspiration for her novel. LSW then read and loved it.

We North Americans (Gibb is Canadian) tend to bring a certain sunny optimism to all topics, motivated at least in part by the knowledge that, of the ever-shrinking pool of people who read, many feel their lives are sufficiently difficult without reading books that throw the less pleasant parts of life into higher relief. This novel was written by a Vietnamese (and later banned in Vietnam). Although I managed to live in Vietnam for two years without really understanding its inhabitants, I learned through hard experience that sunny optimism is never the default position for Vietnamese, so I was prepared for a readable and well-translated slog through needless suffering, spiteful family relationships, the relentless quest for material success (the only yardstick to measure one's worth both in this life and the next), and the constant rendering of loud and obvious judgment on everyone else one meets. That's what I got.

In short, not the sort of novel to take the edges off after a hard day in the cubicle, but still an accurate representation of a time (early 1980's) and place that were not known to many in the West at the time and are now receding into memory. If you are not reading books (at least sometimes) to know things like that, well, then, don't come sit by me.

[Tran Hiep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nhan đề đã nói lên tất cả, xuyên suốt cuốn sách là những giấc mộng "thiên đường cõi trần gian" mơ hồ, mù mịt tương lai, đổ vỡ và cay đắng của những con người thuộc nhiều giai cấp khác nhau. Vừa thương hại vừa phẫn nộ với cái "lý tưởng" ngây thơ, huyền hoặc của ông cậu Chính. Vừa thương vừa giận bà Quế - mẹ đẻ của nhân vật chính. Vừa nể phục lại vừa khiếp cô Tâm. Cả cô Tâm và bà Quế đều dành cả đời lam lũ để lo lắng, yêu thương, che chở cho máu thịt ruột rà của mình theo những cách rất khác nhau. Bỗng thấy thương cho những người phụ nữ thời ấy, họ sinh ra với sứ mệnh vô hình ăn vào tâm trí là hi sinh tất cả cho gia đình.
Cuốn sách cho tôi thấy rõ được "cải cách ruộng đất" là như thế nào trong khi sách giáo khoa môn Sử chỉ ghi 4 chữ đơn giản và giáo viên thì lướt qua như một điều cấm kỵ. Cuốn sách cho tôi thấy vẻ đẹp giản dị trong đời sống, ẩm thực của người dân Bắc Bộ. Và giúp tôi thấy được một phần lịch sử quê hương qua một lăng kính rất khác so với những gì chúng tôi được giảng dạy.
Cá nhân tôi thích cuốn sách này. Nó chân thật, đắng cay và đẹp chân phương.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not understand why this book was chosen to be in "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die." Yes, the descriptions of the food and countryside are beautiful. Yes, we should know what life in Vietnam was like after the war. But there was no story of interest. I did want to know how the relationship between Hang and her uncle ended, but it took too long to get to Russia. And getting there was such a chore - with the author jumping back and forth in time with no reason that I could discern. I finally gave up; did not even skim to find out.

This story compared very unfavorably to "In the Shadow of the Banyon". Set in Cambodia during the regime of Khmer Rouge, it also told how tough it was to survive as a child in a time of revolution and cruel leaders. I thought the writing was much better and the story moved faster.

[George P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel takes us to a time and place pretty much unknown to us- what we know about Vietnam is mostly about the time of the war, and for those in the southern half. Here we are with working-class and middle-class Vietnamese in the time after the war, and the protagonist's time as a guest worker in allied Russia. This is accompanied by some lovely, moving prose and depiction of the emotions of a young woman's struggles. Really well-done and recommended.