A Writer on a Mission of Dissent
Duong Thu Huong, 58, the first Vietnamese writer translated into English, discusses her need to speak out against the current regime with The New York Times. No Man's Land is the latest in a series of novels in which Huong examines the effect of "a brutal and ignoble regime" on the Vietnamese people, manipulated by the government and still living in the shadow of the war.
Huong's book are banned in Vietnam and she has been imprisoned and branded "a dissident whore," but she persists in speaking out against the leadership, especially when she is abroad promoting her books. Acclaimed in Europe and America, Huong was offered asylum by the French government when she first visited there a few years ago. Huong declined, saying she had to return to Vietnam. "I return to do one thing: to spit in the face of the regime."