No Southeast Asian writer has ever won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Indeed, although some, notably Indonesia's Pramoedya Ananta Toer have been nominated more than once, no writer has really come very close to such an achievement. The reasons are more to do with the nature of literature in the region rather than any lack of talent. Nobel Prize juries tend to look for a depth of feeling and imagination, based on psychology and characterization, which are rarely included in Southeast Asian art. Instead, the latter is based on symbolism, right-behaviour rather than right-thinking and adherence to family-based modes of manners which are alien to the western sensitivity.
However, new generations of writers have been exposed to different types of artistic ideas and traditions and it is possible that at least one of them might be honoured in the future. One of the more likely candidates is the Vietnamese author Duong Thu Huong, who is best known for her novels, many of which remain banned in her homeland. Born in 1947, she lived through not just the Indochinese Wars against France and the USA but also the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, during which she was present in the far northern mountains that marked the battlefields of the war. The victory of the Communist Party as a result of the wars of liberation put an end to any hope for free expression in Vietnam - however, there has rarely if ever been a period in that country's history during which people could speak their mind freely.
Duong Thu Huong has fallen foul of that repression with the banning of many of her books and the presence of obstacles placed in her career by the authorities. The problems have arisen not so much because of outright criticism of Communism or the leaders or officials of the Communist Party, although that can be find in her work, so much as in the internal lives and sensibilities of characters in her fiction which offer the possibilities of other forms of achievement and of desire beyond the political. In Memories of a Pure Spring, the disappointments of life in the post-war country are brought to perhaps their starkest expression.
The corruption and greed of the officials is, from a literary perspective, not so important because these can be found just about everywhere. Instead, it is the portrayal of the intentions and hopes of the central characters that is of most value - having said which, there remains a need to find translators for her work who are capable of rendering her prose in a consistent and sensitive fashion. The need to balance a clear flow of prose with the occasional footnote to describe features which are not immediately obvious to the foreign reader should not be impossible to resolve.
Duong Thu Huong is now building quite a substantial body of work to support her claims to literary stardom. Being a somewhat oppressed author is also likely to help her win prizes among certain audiences too.
