Abstract
Phạm Th Hoài entered Vietnamese literature on the wings of đổ mói (renovation policy), and soon established herself as one of Vietnam's foremost contemporary writers. Her first novel, Thiên sú (The messenger from heaven), marked her out as an artist who seeks originality and diversity. Renovation in Vietnam gave birth to wide-ranging discussion of many aspects of Vietnamese reality; in the literary sphere, it brought about variety and experimentation resulting from the rejection of the dictates of socialist realism. Phạm Thổ 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 sú (although other works are also considered) and examines her writing for what it reveals about postwar Vietnam and its values and attitudes to gender, setting her work in the broader political, social, and cultural context of modern Vietnamese literature.
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