| Rarely has the
saga of the Vietnamese diaspora been captured so poignantly as in this
powerful novel set in Vietnam and Hong Kong by an exciting new British
writer. In Vietnam, during the Sino-Vietnam
border war two brothers shelter a relative deserting from the army and
themselves become fugitives. They are captured and imprisoned as soon
as they cross the border to China. When finally expelled back to
Vietnam, they are tortured and imprisoned as suspected spies. Escaping
again, by sea to Hong Kong, they endure years in UN detention camps.
Critics Comments
"Vietnam is a country haunted by its turbulent
history. Independence and fragile unity followed wars against French,
Japanese, American and Khmer forces, but political, cultural and
social scars remain. This novel explores how even in peacetime
internal conflict can be just as devastating and in many ways more
difficult to come to terms with.
"Spanning the twenty-five years after the withdrawal of
American troops, the book provides a stunning but traumatic portrait
of a nation struggling with forging a new consensus and establishing a
workable framework for economic development and social change. In the
Vietnam Heather Stroud portrays, freedom is a slippery concept and its
high price includes broken families and shattered dreams.
"When Cuong, one of the central characters, deserted
from the army in the early 80s after a cathartic incident on the
Sino-Vietnamese border, he set in motion a train of events involving
friends and family that would ultimately lead them all to re-examine
their view of themselves, their country and their role in its future.
"The author worked for several years in the Hong
Kong detention centres and her characters reflect first-hand
experience of the courage and determination of people torn between
love of their country and a quiet desperation to avoid persecution.
"While many refugees were indeed economic migrants,
others were genuinely at risk at the hands of a regime prepared to
sacrifice individual happiness for that of the greater good.
"Hatreds and jealousies stirred up by the country's
violent past surface in a plot that is not only exciting, but engages
readers on several levels. Readers will easily empathise with the
heart-wrenching travails of ordinary people unjustly pursued,
imprisoned and abused by authorities at home, on the mainland and in
Hong Kong.
"Love, betrayal, vengeance, tragedy and frustration
are woven into a complex tapestry, which may be as dense as some of
the forests the action takes place in, but remains gripping and highly
readable.
"Then there is the imagery. The Ghost Locust of the
title refers to a type of dragonfly that brings bad luck; the
spiritual nature of the Vietnamese people underpins much of the book.
It also became the nickname of Dung, a refugee driven to despair and
the edge of madness in Dong Hung internment camp. It might equally
represent the bad luck of a country that threw off foreign shackles
only to be bound by those of its own making.
"Finally, there is the history. Many authors wear
their research on their sleeves, but Stroud manages to evoke the raw
beauty of Vietnam and relay historical detail by using tight dialogue
and believable characterisation. This not only places the tale in
context, but also takes readers beyond narrative into a deeper level
of understanding.
"For all the troubling
issues it raises, the book's message is one of hope. Given the will of
Vietnamese people and the support of the international community,
Stroud indicates Vietnam can rise above its troubled past to build on
its natural resources and emerge as a successful and cohesive entity.
Stroud's contribution to that process has been practical in the past
and she continues that work by donating all the royalties of this
poignant book to the South East Asia Resource Action Centre, which
helps families made stateless by the vagaries of international law,
political happenstance or administrative selective vision."
Paul McGuire,
South China Morning Post
"As Bao Ninh's masterpiece,
The Sorrow of War, finally reclaimed a powerful Vietnamese voice and
counterpoint to many American novels, movies and ruminations on the
Vietnam War, so Ghost Locust, rips away their concentration camp
numbers and returns the human faces of courage, love and dignity to
those unlucky Vietnamese refugees who arrived after mid-1989, when the
world's major powers redefined them as pariahs and "economic asylum
seekers" fit only to be forcibly repatriated from what had been havens
of first asylum, like Hong Kong."
Fred
Armentrout, founding president of Hong Kong PEN
"Ghost Locust is a fascinating account of the life
and loves, trials and tribulations of certain individuals caught up in
civil war and the long-running determination of a small poor country
to rid itself of outside influence and to emerge independent.
"The country is Vietnam and the time is the past
thirty years of its troubled history. Apart from The Sorrow of War,
written by Bao Ninh there is a dearth of writing from the point of
view of the people who have lived through those turbulent times.
"Ghost Locust takes us, through the eyes of these
individuals, into the world of repression and fear of Vietnam in the
60s. Everyone is looking over their shoulder, expecting that knock in
the night. "The fear creeps up from behind and catches you by
surprise". Ghost Locust takes us into people's homes, eavesdropping on
their lives. It's damp, it's dark, you can almost smell the wet earth.
The first half of the book is based in Vietnam, and the action then
moves, in 1989, with the protagonists fleeing Vietnam in an
unseaworthy boat, to Hong Kong and its notorious detention centres.
"Mrs Stroud is well qualified to write about life in
those insanitary unsafe havens. The people she met there in the course
of working for an NGO became her friends, she was able to visit inside
and she gives a vivid description of conditions as she saw them at
first hand – at least until she joined the chosen few of us who were
banned from the camps. Mrs Stroud was much involved in Freedom
Magazine produced by the inmates of Whitehead and their attempts to
have their voices heard. The reality and desperation of their
situation springs off the page.
"She tells their stories with compassion and a sense
of the conflict which raged within many of them – conflict between
their love for their own land and their love of freedom, the mixed
feelings that they have for Uncle Ho – was he the villain of the
piece, or a highly motivated advocate of independence? Or both?
"This is a close look inside the heads and hearts of
some of the boat people, and incidentally revealing of Mrs Stroud's
own even handed view of the politics and recent history of Vietnam.
"It is a bit of a
cliffhanger too, will the escapees succeed in reaching freedom with
the authorities on their heels? I found myself absorbed in the tale
for its own sake, and I am sure you will feel the same."
Pam Baker,
Refugee Concern
"Heather Stroud's novel
humanizes the Vietnam era in surprising ways. It is not a war novel,
though the war is central. It is a novel about people, but
international politics, human rights, refugee questions arrest us at
every turn. Set in the years following the American War, Ghost Locust
explores the optimism, hope, disillusion, and danger that marked the
years of reconstruction and party dominance in Vietnam. This is a
fine, compassionate book, a model of mature story telling,
interweaving character and politics, custom and individual narrative."
Peter
Stambler, author of Encounters With Cold Mountain,
winner of the Quarterly Review of Literature's
International Poetry Competition
Readers Comments
Extract
Copyright © Heather
Stroud
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