Paradise Of The Blind

More bombs fell on Vietnam during the Vietnam war than all the bombs in World War II. Some of those bombs, that never detonated, lie in the earth, forgotten. War is a common image American's have of Vietnam, what they don't know is the civil war that rages within families.

Banned in Vietnam, Paradise of the Blind is the first novel from Vietnam ever published in the United States. Duong Thu Huong, civil rights activist and protester of the Communist Party, paints a picture of her life in a small village outside of Hanoi that shows ordinary citizen life in it's true form. It is a culture where men dominate and self-serving government officials dictate what happens in families.

Paradise of the Blind is a story of repression and poverty, relationships and survival. Huong tells a story about things that are not supposed to be in the country called the "Communist Experiment." The people, forced to adopt a system where money and jobs are rationed, are exposed to poverty they are unaccustomed with. People become obsessed with finding ways to make up for what they don't earn by selling off family possessions.

With Communist land reform forcing families to give up land, the struggle within the family to conform or be imprisioned is great. As family members fight to survive the bidding of their corrupt leaders, they clash among themselves. As her uncle's political loyalities replace family devotion and her aunt and mother are torn upon what side to take, Huong reveals the destruction of her family. Written in simple direct language, it is a story of sacrifice and bitterness all entwined in the beauty of the land where it takes place.

[ Prism Online November 1995 Homepage ]

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