Walking tall on a lonely road

 A speech given by the then party Chief Nguyen Linh opened up floodgates of criticism for a generation of writers and artists (including Duong Thu Huong who was forty at that time) who had been forced to speak only of the glorious achievements and heroic acts of the party, never its failures/errors. In the process, the predicament of the individual was never expressed in literature.

 The novel under review is one of the first to break out of this set pattern and deserves a special consideration on that account.

 Beyond Illusions is the story of Linh, a young and dazzlingly beautiful woman who falls in love with her brilliant professor, marries him, has a child by him and gradually gets disillusioned at the way he supports and glorifies the Party.

 Finally she divorces him, has an affair with a well-known composer who has had a string of flings, is insulted by his wife, finally emerging as her own woman.

 Interestingly, Huong, a divorcee and single mother herself, had taken an outspoken stand on both literary freedom of expression and democratic reforms.

 To quote from the short note about the author at the end of the novel,