Paradise of the Blind: A novel

A short response to any book by Duong Thu Huong is a good deal like a short response to the Bible--it will be lacking. This is especially the case with Huong's 1988 work Paradise of the Blind, the story of a young Hanoi woman, Hang, forced to give up her university studies and work in the Soviet Union in order to support her mother. This is only half the story though. Hang reached adulthood after the heroic period of the twentieth century in Vietnam, namely the wars for independence and reunification, as well as the revolution. These events led to colossally momentous experiences in the lives of Hang's family--her mother and aunt whom she loves and the uncle she hates--so profoundly shaping were the experiences of these times that there consequences for Hang's family have nearly as deep consequences for her own life. Ultimately the only way that Hang is able to escape the chains bind her family members to the past is by abandoning her connection to the it. Hang's troubles actually began a decade before she was born when Uncle Chinh returned triumphant from the war against the French to introduce land redistribution to his own and her mother's village in the middle 1950's. The approach Chinh took to land reform essentially ensured that he was going to be less than beloved by any person in the village--finding the most depraved and degraded of the village's lumpen proletariat and elevating them to the status of rural working class heroes. The paternal side of Hang's family has their property ruthlessly expropriated and her father is forced into internal exile. Chinh does not just acquiesce to their impoverishment and humiliation, but his own belief in the socialist millennium being just around the corner impels him, quite happily, to fanatically push for it and treat his sister harshly for continuing to even care about dispossessed husband and in laws. Chinh thus violates loyalty to kin in order to serve his own ideological pretensions and a poorly articulated form of class solidarity. At the novel's close when we see him waiting hand and foot on smugglers half of his age in order to better his material circumstances, it is truly pitiful, but is justice through history's cunning--one that was not likely to have been lost on the government authority that decided to withdraw the book from circulation. Considering the pain he has caused, Chinh is not worthy of pity, but it is hard to argue that his situation is not pitiful. Hang's Aunt Tam is the surviving victim of Chinh's fanaticism, but she is not a character that could easily be described as pitiful, though she is worthy of pity in a way Chinh simply is not capable of being. Kept warm at night by the hate she has for Chinh and the contempt she holds all Communists in, this fanatically hardworking capitalist has grown absurdly rich by Vietnamese standards, without having to employ another person; thus making her a walking and talking reminder that not every rich person is rich by din

This disturbing book describes how the communist regime in post war Vietnam trampled the hopes and dreams of the peasants it professed to serve. This book is beautifully written the descriptions of the land and the people are very poetic.

this was an excellent book that portreyed the life and rich history of the vietnamese woman.

If anyone wants to truly understand Vietnam's history and what life under communism is like, they should read this book. Duong Thu Huong reveals a reality I had not known about until I read Paradise of the Blind. This book captures the idealistic hope and devastating betrayal and disillusionment of those who gave their lives and hopes to communism, only to discover it is a lie. I will never be able to look at Vietnam and the war the same way again. The fact that this book is banned in Vietnam only reveals its power. I look forward to reading more of this author's books.

When the Vietnamese Communist Party slightly gave people freedom of speech in 1987, Duong Thu Huong cleverly borrowed many stories to analyze what had happened to ordinary people of the northern part of Vietnam under the communist regime. She challenges the communists to look at people's miserable lives that they have made and lured people into. Paradise of The Blind depicts some realities of negative aspects of communism. The story circles around the life of a young lady, Hang, in her relationship with her both mother's and father's relatives. All of them, her mother, her aunt, her uncle, her cousins and herself are all intertwined in a twist of the country without a way out. The story gives readers a mixed feeling of pity, sympathy, hatred and love for these Vietnamese people. However, Duong Thu Huong does not tell the whole truth. She does not point out some crucial details of the horrors the Land Reform Movement had created and of how poor people had been through. For example, these communists and even common people would sacrifice their parents and their siblings for their own fame and future during the Land Reform Movement. Moreover, many communists would not give their immediate families' members a way out. Paradise of The Blind was among the first books written under Vietnamese Communist Regime ever translated into English. I think you will enjoy it. If you are among those suffering and struggling by the ideal or "paradise" of the communists, you will share the same feelings of those people. If you don't know what live under the Communist Regime is like, you may have a great insight about it.