Dương Hướng’s No Man River, an award-winning and widely read modern Vietnamese classic, masterfully explores life in rural north Vietnam during the French Indochina War, Vietnam War, and the border war with China. Set in the pastoral Đông Village, the novel chronicles the lives of the villagers during this tumultuous and brutal period of newfound independence.
The story begins when Vạn, once a poor orphan from the Nguyễn clan, returns victorious from the French Indochina War as a decorated hero. Now thrust into a local leadership position for the nascent communist government, he must remain utterly perfect and immovable in this role to guide his clan and village —even when doing so isolates him and prevents him from finding happiness with the woman he loves, the widow Nhân. Meanwhile, Nghĩa and Hạnh, young members of the adversarial Nguyễn and Vũ clans, grow up together in this new era of an independent Vietnam and fall for each other, a development celebrated by the young generation but scorned by the old. Yet, just as Nghĩa and Hạnh hope to begin their new life together in this new era, the Americans invade and Nghĩa must take up his duty to fight them. As his deployment stretches from months to years to a decade with barely any contact, Hạnh must remain faithful and uncomplaining in accordance with the expectations of her community, putting her life and aspirations on hold when she does not even know if her husband will live.
The forces of tradition and progress exist in a perpetual state of flux, impelling the characters to navigate a changing and unstable world that cannot neatly be described by either the old or the new. Despite the social, political, and economic transformations sweeping the country, Đông Village remains firmly rooted in tradition and superstition, a reality which leaves the characters subjugated by the rules and expectations of their community. This sense of societal turbulence is pervasive throughout the novel, whether that be in the clashes of political ideologies at the nation’s genesis or the gradual declines of repressive traditions that, while promising a new and more egalitarian society down the road, never happen in time to benefit the characters. The characters, particularly Vạn and Hạnh, find themselves the architects of a more equal and liberated dawn that they will never benefit from. “If society were to move forward,” then they “had to learn to put their irrational fears and desires behind,” casting aside both tradition and personal happiness for the promise of a better tomorrow. The generation that fought and sacrificed to cast out the French colonizers finds that there is no easy end to their work of nation building and the transition from the old order to the new is never seamless, not even within their own lives.
Loyalty, and the various contradictory ways in which it manifests, is another powerful force in the novel. Every one of the characters is, to varying degrees, loyal to their families, community, and country, but this tangled web of obligations leaves none of them unscathed. Whether this results in the desire to spurn their family’s wish for the sake of happiness, to fight for the country at the expense of love, or to sacrifice family for the safety of the village, everyone is forced to choose at some point. The longstanding feud between the Nguyễn and Vũ clans and the deep traditions of the village often stand in opposition to loyalty to the Communist Party and newfound opportunities, ensuring the characters’ transitioning to the new order never happens cleanly and they must inevitably betray some part of the world they hold so dear. Similarly, the struggles between political ideologies, superstitions, and religious beliefs, while not taking the centerstage, capture an acute sense of complicated and clashing loyalties that embed the characters in a conflict between the old world and the new one.
The way that Dương depicts war by showing the human costs rather than aestheticizing violence is a particular strength of this novel. Rather than intense combat or intranational transformation, the novel’s focus is the countless sacrifices that ordinary people must make in times of war and change. The foreign powers the village men have gone to fight—first the French and then the Americans—are maintained as nebulous forces only glimpsed on the page, noteworthy more so because of their impacts they have on the characters than their physical presence. Instead of focusing on the Western armies, Dương spotlights the ways that the struggle for independence has shaped both the men who return forever altered from the fighting and the people who await them on the home front. The physical and mental scars exhibited by the novel’s veterans are rendered with such honesty and compassion, showing the ways large and small, public and private that their lives have been irreparably altered by conflicts with colonizing and imperialistic powers. In showing only the effects of war, both lasting and immediate, and omitting combat from the page, Dương expertly demonstrates the human cost of battle that was, as explained in the foreword, intentionally excluded from Vietnamese literature prior to the original publication of No Man River in 1990. The devastation of war is wrought with haunting clarity by the fact no character returns from the battlefield unchanged, if they return at all, and those they return to are forever altered by the lost time.
The greatest success of this novel is that, in exploring life in Vietnam during the wars of the mid-20th century, it never fails to highlight the intimate human costs that result from the grand societal forces of war and change. Nghĩa and Vạn’s experiences as soldiers are shown through the quiet ways in which they miss out on the lives they dreamed of creating for themselves and the need to sacrifice love for the sake of defending their country. Although Vạn returns a decorated hero from the French-Indochina War, the role he assumes in Đông Village denies him the possibility of lasting love with Nhân. “In everything Vạn did, even the small things, he considered whether it was in the people or the Party’s best interest,” but never is he allowed to do things for his own interest. Nghĩa holds optimism for a future where he and Hạnh can live peacefully, mend the rift between their rival families, and guide Đông Village to prosperity, yet he must abandon that dream to fight against the Americans with no guarantee of survival. While they are rewarded for their deeds, the rewards are not always commensurate or free of further sacrifice, and their perpetual service to their nation and community does not inherently bring them the happiness they expected. For Vạn and Nghĩa, the work of nation building and the cost of freedom never truly ends.
Similarly, the expectations of womanhood deny Nhân and Hạnh from moving on with their lives and achieving happiness. They behave according to prescribed social expectations as the wives of soldiers, a role which often leaves them isolated, trapped, and forever beholden to unfair standards. The love they feel is so strongly expressed on the page, making their need to stifle their feelings ever more tragic. In dedicating so much time to the women supporting the war effort unseen, the novel deftly highlights the slow, quiet hardships the wars against the French and Americans inflicted on those left behind both by the soldiers and by Vietnam’s official national narratives. The effects of war are not just found in lost lives and the traumas of violence, but in lost love, time, and opportunity. Although Nhân “understood losses were inevitable in war” and thought she would be prepared, “she had not imagined she would have to suffer so many.” The true dramatic tension of the novel does not come from the lives the characters take or make for themselves, but the lives they lose out on.
As the villagers navigate their changing world, they are all regarded with equal dignity and veracity in the eyes of the narrative. While some characters may play the role of antagonists or exhibit negative traits, they are never completely stripped of complexity and the possibility of redemption. For instance, the character Tốn begins the novel as the heir of a family who grew rich from collaborating with the French and exploiting his own people. While he first enters the story as the child of ill-gotten generational wealth, he grows into a patriotic soldier who fights for his country and builds a successful life through his own merit. I found the way Tốn’s arc both adheres to and pushes against the ideals advocated by people such as Vạn very compelling, as it is a sort of microcosm for how the transition from the old status quo to the new is not always neat or linear; in a way, Tốn simultaneously redeems himself and regresses. The multifaceted humanity of the novel shines through in the way characters such as Tốn change in certain respects while remaining the same in others, showcasing the way that everyone has both successes and failings in their lives and can never be succinctly captured by a single perception.
Through Quan Manh Ha and Charles Waugh’s excellent and timely translation, No Man River captures the human experience in a tumultuous and formative era that is often glossed over and reduced to simple archetypes in the West. Dương’s peerless novel highlights the lives and traumas of people obscured in official histories, bringing their experiences to the conversation to create a more all-encompassing and humanized national memory of Vietnam’s wars for independence in the twentieth century.
No Man River
by Dương Hướng
translated by Quan Manh Ha and Charles Waugh
Penguin Random House SEA
Aaron Gerhart is a graduate student at the University of Montana, where he is studying creative writing. He holds a B.F.A. in creative writing and a B.A in anthropology, linguistics, and literature. His academic interests encompass contemporary American literature, Critical Refugee Studies, and descriptive linguistics. His work has been published online by The Oval, the University of Montana’s undergraduate literary magazine, as well as Cha, a Hong Kong-based literary journal. He divides his time between Missoula and Helena, Montana.
