~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Busting a taboo

A few years ago, Bui Anh Tan set out to write the first Vietnamese novel directly exploring homosexual life. He wanted to encourage readers "to be more sympathetic, lenient and humane" to those stifled by social taboos.

So when A World Without Women was awarded an official literary prize earlier this month, it might have seemed like an indication of official support for Tan's tolerant approach. Apparently not: Homosexuality has "now become a social issue that may be dangerous for Vietnam's young generation if there is no advance warning," says one of the judges, Hanoi writer Nam Ha, in explaining why the book was honoured. Tan, of course, is not the first novelist to be misunderstood. And if nothing else, the prize from the Ministry of Public Security and the Vietnam Writers Association has generated fresh publicity for his novel, which was first published in 2000 and is now into its fourth printing.

Tan, a 36-year-old reporter in Ho Chi Minh City, sticks to plain prose in his tale of interlocking gay lives. The main character is a closet gay scientist who learns he has the HIV virus. Despairing, he arranges to be murdered by a gay hit man. Meanwhile, the handsome policeman investigating the case is also a closet gay. But at least he's in a loving relationship with a gay bar-owner, who gives voice to the author's appeal for tolerance: "People like me are also human beings," the bar-owner pleads at one stage. "We also want to be loved, to breathe, to live."

Few would doubt Tan's courage in writing about gay lives in Vietnam, where homosexuality remains a taboo, if not actually a crime. Still, his hyperactive plot and blunt prose have led some Hanoi literati to dismiss the novel as sensationalist. Tan's appeal for acceptance is also undercut by the way one of the novel's characters is "cured" of his homosexuality and becomes attracted to women. As one reader says, "It's a step forward, yes, but only in the context of extraordinary backwardness."

By Margot Cohen - The Far Eastern Economic Review - August 29, 2002.