'Homosapiens A' and 'homosapiens Z': love, rseignation, and cultural disorientation in Pham Thi Hoài's novel Thiên sur

Author: Healy, Dana

Source: South East Asia Research, Volume 8, Number 2, 1 July 2000 , pp. 185-203(19)

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Abstract:

Pham Thi Hoài entered Vietnamese literature on the wings of doi moi (renovation policy), and soon established herself as one of Vietnam's foremost contemporary writers. Her first novel, Thiên sur (The messenger from heaven), marked her out as an artist who seeks originality and diversity of socialist realism. Pham Thi Hoài's work is filled with descriptions of social dislocation, cultural disorientation, and the absurdities of post-war Vietnamese society. She refuses to fit into a mould but pushes creativity to its limits by experimenting with language and style. Her cool, detached narrative voice, with its sharp irony, is well suited to the images of alienation, confusion, and hopelessness she creates. This paper provides a commentary on the novel Thiên sur (although other works are also considered) and examines her writing for what it reveals about post-war Vietnam and its values and attitudes to gender, setting her work in the broader political, social, and cultural context of modern Vietnamese literature.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5367/000000000101297262

Publication date: 2000-07-01

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South East Asia Research publishes articles based on original research or fieldwork on all aspects of South East Asia within the disciplines of archaeology, art history, economics, geography, history, language and literature, law, music, political science, social anthropology and religious studies. This peer-reviewed journal is published four times per year by IP Publishing in cooperation with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). SOAS is the leading centre in this field in Europe and one of the most prestigious centres of South East Asian Studies in the world.
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