Product Description
Parole d'homme ou de racaille ? Ni l'une ni l'autre. Quand Sylvain Fantin prend sa plume, il est interné, comme autrefois dans sa banlieue. ... Read more

Product Description
Set in the late twentieth century, Hanoi Blues explores the political fear and struggle for survival and true freedom by the Vietnamese people after the violent upheavals of the earlier part of the century. The reader is placed directly within the disturbing situation created by the current totalitarian regime with its oppressive atmosphere and startling mix of progress, prosperity and poverty. The central characters are a young globe-trotting French journalist and her lover, a radical Vietnamese artist. As we follow their intimate relationship through her eyes, we are progressively confronted with dilemmas of cultural differences in sexual relationships, public opinion, omnipresent manipulative propaganda, varying concepts of freedom, and customs of society with its particular prejudices. The reader shares in their mutual passions, separation and loss with equal intensity. Inspired by the author's own experiences of living in the country, this story resounds with stark authenticity. ... Read more

Product Description
H, c'est l'intrus parfait. L'empêcheur de danser, le gêneur au grand coeur. Qui ramène de chacune de ses aventures un objet rare, un mot nouveau. Une histoire. Et toujours des senteurs d'ailleurs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Raw & Real
This is a powerful book, because raw and real. Hard to believe it was written by someone uneducated, as its insights are intellectual and its metaphors breathtakingly poetic. Maybe it was ghostwritten, or complied from notes or a diary; or maybe it's a compilation of stories about many people applied to one. Or maybe it is what it seems, the worst outcome, because it shocks by illustrating how far life can sink when loss desensitizes.As it turns out, it's a novel, but so convincing it reads like a biography.

The dynamic is interesting: giving nothing (sex) for something (money) allows the exploited to feel in control, when there is no control. And her rant about hypocrisy not only demonstrates class hatred, but seems a pitiful rationalization for reducing our best emotion to a transaction. The real dynamic is allegiance for protection, inevitable in the abused.

I had to read slowly, because the text over-powers. No question, though: It's one of a kind, and a bargain, if only because it makes us thankful for lives we didn't lead. Is "she" an intellectual or just French? But to be one is to be the other, even when Parisians are beasts. All in all, a modern "Moll Flanders," unredeemed and haunting.

Jeanne Cordelier has written twelve books, best-sellers in France.Her website is interesting: JeanneCordelier.com. ... Read more