This novel is a brutally honest tale that takes its readers on an unforgettable journey of spiritual weariness through the majestic jungles of Vietnam, exposing the harsh reality of the experiences of a Communist soldier. It is a story written by an author with first-hand knowledge and experience of combat, as she herself lived through the experiences of the Indochinese wars as a soldier who led the Communist Youth Brigade to the front. She was one of only three survivors of the ordeal. Duong Thu Huong’s use of a disjointed narration of chronological events in the protagonist’s journey is the best tool for exposing the differences between rhetoric and reality in a war situation.
    The novel opens with a glimpse into the life of the disheartened protagonist Quan, who has already spent ten years of his precious life fighting for an unworthy ideology of glory and freedom that the Communist party promised to implement for Vietnam at the conclusion of the war. However, Quan is soon able to distinguish between rhetoric and reality. The gruesome casualties and injuries of combat have taken a toll on his sensitive emotions, and he is no longer the innocent youth he was a decade ago. As he recalls the innocence of his childhood past, he remembers his closest friends Bien and Luong, who have since joined the war as well, and who have each journeyed down different paths and accepted different fates. Luong was totally enveloped in the war as he climbed higher in rank and status. As for Bien, the war seemed to have taken away his sanity, as he was kept locked up in Zone K in the midst of the jungle. Things have changed now, and it was during these ten years that Quan recalled, “Time had slipped between us; we were no longer little boys, naked and equal” (33).
    As Quan embarks on a journey in search for his insane friend Bien, he has a series of flashbacks, which contrast his previous perfect village life to the pessimistic present of war and destruction. It is these flashbacks, along with discovering more dead bodies, which further confirms how Communism and its ideologies have failed him. His initial struggle to participate in the “Noble Mission” has now ceased to exist, and his only mission in the war now has become his fight for survival.
    After Quan finds Bien, he is given a period of rest from the weariness of war and is allowed to return to his native village. Once he arrives in his hometown, he quickly discovers that the perfect village he remembers is nothing like the way it used to be. His father has aged and another man has impregnated his childhood sweetheart, Hoa. But the hardest change that Quan had to accept was the death of his younger brother, Quang. Ten years ago when Quan left home, he was hypnotized by the glory of the ideology of a free Vietnam and enlisted as a soldier for the Viet Cong government. Quang, too, was also mesmerized by the same glory that lured his brother into the fight. He later followed in his brother’s footsteps and paid the ultimate price with his life. For Quan, the pain caused by the death of his brother was like a stab in the heart. Quang was his brother’s last remaining hope because Quang was a brilliant scholar destined for a better future, but now he was merely another corpse that the war and Communist ideology have claimed. Quang’s death has angered Quan a great deal. From this point in the novel, Quan looses complete faith in the Communist Party, as well as his willpower to fight any longer for a false ideology; he realizes from then on that, “It’s over. It’s really over.”
    Novel Without A Name is for anyone who wants to understand what it was like to fight behind enemy lines during the Indochinese Wars. Duong Thu Huong does an exceptional job in revealing the harsh realities of war and the psychological impact it has on human beings. Duong also does a unique job in revealing the strong brainwashing power that ideology can have on the mind, which can forever change the lives of some soldiers and claim the lives of most. For Quan, the war and false ideology changed him forever. He best summarizes his loss of innocence by saying, “Never. We never forget anything, never lose anything, never exchange anything, never undo what has been. There is no way back to the source, to the place where the pure, clear water once gushed forth. The river had cut across the countryside, the towns, dragging refuse and mud in its wake” (148).