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...