Dear Madame, I've read your manuscript in one leap. My homesickness that keeps sapping me made it even more attractive. / / Through your text the reader could better know Vietnam, its people, its soul at the present time. / / In my opinion, since the end of the colonial time, no European writer has tried to reflect our country's interior life. Vietnam in its painful mutation, its doi moi full of contradictions, extolled by the single ruling party, still remains foreign and strange to the Western world. In this respect, your novel a literary as well as a political event will stand out. / / You have known how to apprehend the life, the Vietnamese manners and customs often hard to grasp for a Westerner./ /My best wishes for the success of your work.
Yours, Tin
(translated from the French original)
The author's novel about Vietnam is now available in English! This text takes us beyond the usual lies and postcards about current Vietnam.
"This is a spellbinding story of passion and the politics of fear set in a city in transition. Cordelier brings the streets and waterways of Hanoi alive with accuracy of detail and telling imagery."
The English translation of Hanoi Blues is now available. The novel was written when Jeanne Cordelier lived in Vietnam. The love story between a French woman reporter and a Vietnamese painter is told within the context of authentic images of daily life in communist Vietnam, exposing the lack of freedom of expression and human rights. The book is now available at Abebooks.com , at Alibris.com ,
The French version can be bought here.
The source of inspiration:
"Two years of living in Vietnam inspired me to write Hanoi Blues , a novel where love, friendship and politics are entangled. But it also represents my view of a people, which has deeply moved me by its history and by the misery where it currently finds itself. As if they had replaced one curse by another one!"
Jeanne Cordelier
Be careful, oil, 1998, Lê Quang Hà.
As
a background to Jeanne's novel, read the memoirs of colonel Bui Tin. You
can order it here.Professor of history in Vietnam, December 2001:
"Readers will know the aspirations, the feelings, the real life of the people. Thanks, thank you for the writer who helps us to break through the wall of silence, to reveal the truth like it is."
(translated from the French original)
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1999-2008 Jeanne Cordelier©.
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by Jan Valdelin.. E-mail to webmaster. Latest update
2008-05-18