This seventh volume in the Voices from Vietnam Series introduces U. S. readers to another major figure in modern Vietnamese letters. Doan Le is noted for her versatility of style and her originality. As Wayne Karlin notes in his introduction, "she is a master of allegory and gently complex satire; in her stories, a frustrated petitioner, unable to obtain housing can change not only into a fly, but into a gay fly (or a fly pretending to be gay); the dead can mirror the snobberies and passions of the living; a man can try to reason out the complexities of his relationship with his father's...

Beginning in Vietnam shortly after the end of the American war and ending sometime in the 21st century, this 8th volume of Curbstone's Voices from Vietnam Series follows the life of Nguyen Thi My Tiep, a woman writer and a revolutionary, whose girlhood is spent as a guerrilla fighter, and whose post-war life becomes a search for personal liberation and individual love. Tiep's struggles are seamlessly connected to the changes her country is going through, as Da Ngan's daring and controversial novel draws us into the life of a woman who insists on leading a meaningful and honest life--as a...