Up To Speed

Racing through Duong Thu Huong's Paradise of the Blind the narrator's (or is it the writer's) obsession with food seems at times the most obvious surface feature of the text. I suppose it represents a deep reality of Vietnamese culture, but I do wonder if there isn't something very personal going on here. Assuming Mdm Duong can get cable tv under house arrest (I think that's her situation at this time) I reckon she's an obvious candidate for an addiction to Masterchef.

By the way, the strong women in the novels of Duong Thu Huong and Arundhati Roy shred to little pieces simplistic stereotypes of submissive Asian females - as do the writers themselves, of course. There's something more than a little intimidating reading the work of ladies whose moral courage in standing against oppression sort of puts one's own rather skulking little life to shame.