Au large de la tere promise.

Nguyen, Dinh-Hoa

Nguyen Quang Than. Anh Bayard, tr. Aries, Fr. Picquier. 1997. 255 pages. 139 F. ISBN 2-87730-310-1.

Nguyen Quang Than had already made a name for himself through his writings, including some children's books, before the appearance of Ngoai khoi mien dat hua (On the Sea Off the Promised Land), the excellent novel whose French translation is under review here. Au large de la terre promise is about the numerous intrigues which crisscross the money-minded new Vietnam, a socialist country that the "open policy" of the 1980s has turned into a market economy, with young people inventing their own formulas for survival. The author, easily the first dissident writer of his land, has cleverly thrown an artistic basketweave around his protagonist Dao Van Turin. This idealistic engineer, whose former girlfriend Chi, a trained architect, is full of ideas and energy and whose needy brother-in-law Thao tries to make a decent living as a writer in a corrupted world devoid of any room for culture, art, or science. Chi has had two lovers (a painter, then an architect) before she meets Turin upon his release from jail. Chi admires him and contrasts him with her husband Thuc, an influential physicist trained in France.

Another character is Bich, an ambitious, sexy young woman whose father, a former postal clerk, has grown rich through hard work in the bric-a-brac business. This entrepreneurial man was able to open a hardware store - after he accidentally found gold leaves inside an old radio that cost him only two chicken eggs - and later to buy a house on the riverside. It is at this address that Bich offers to put up Turin and Chi if they get married.

Tuan is a competent lab worker, but his boss (a mere worker who has climbed up the party totem pole) gets the credit for a project in which Tuan is the cadre who succeeded in stopping an oil leak from the turbine. But he seems to tolerate the mediocrity and corruption around him, where people are just like "blades of grass, old rags, or mere pebbles." He indulges in introspection and feels that he is despised by everybody and that he also holds his fellow men in contempt.

The climax, arranged by Bich, is a birthday party during which, in front of all the guests (including Turin) gathered in her huge living room, she denounces Thuc for refusing to marry her even though she has given him a son, who is now six. Jealous of Chi, whom Thuc (a member of the Communist Party who has become rich through contraband) loves only because of Chi's powerful father, Tuan is hurt when Chi agrees to become Thuc's wife.

The thrust of this superbly written novel is the deplorable life of Turin, a young man of integrity who, in desperation, even contemplates risking malaria, jaundice, and syphilis and venturing into the boondocks in search of gold. Constantly "tortured by regret, pain and desire," he "roams around like a boat adrift off the promised land, never able to reach the shore."

Scattered local-color details about a dog whose pedigree is traced back to an army canine that survived the battle of Dien-bien-phu, about Thuc's uncle who "invented" the popsicle, about the trade in dried human bile that is much valued in Hong Kong as an aphrodisiac, about wartime surroundings, and about quiet South China beaches all serve to enliven this very human story.

Dinh-Hoa Nguyen Southern Illinois University, Carbondale