The New York Times
March 17, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

   SECTION: Section 7; Page 25; Column 4; Book Review Desk
   HEADLINE: BOOKS IN BRIEF: FICTION
   BYLINE:  By Sudip Bose

   BEYOND ILLUSIONS
   By Duong Thu Huong.
   Hyperion East, $23.95. The Vietnamese writer Duong Thu Huong is a
   political dissident whose work is now banned in her native country;
   her work continues to trickle out in the United States. "Beyond
   Illusions," which was written in the mid-1980's, is Huong's first
   novel, and it appears here in English for the first time in this very
   readable translation by Nina McPherson and Phan Huy Duong. It's a book
   that presents a deft portrait of life in Communist Hanoi, where
   unforgiving public opinion casts a lengthy shadow upon people's
   private choices. Huong tells the story of a young woman, Linh, who
   falls out of love with her husband, a journalist named Nguyen, when
   she learns that he has "compromised himself to carve out a secure
   place in society, to reap all the material benefits." Linh leaves her
   life of relative luxury and begins an affair with a much older
   composer who has fallen from party favor, but whose idealism proves
   ultimately false. Huong's book is both political novel and
   disillusioning love story; it gives us a Vietnam is that is
   occasionally beautiful but always terrifying.   Sudip Bose

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