Dương Hướng’s No Man River (Bến không chồng) was first published in 1991 and won the Vietnam Writers' Association Prize for Fiction. Translated into English by Quan Manh Ha and Charles Waugh, it captures the brutal reality of conflict in Vietnam from 1945 to 1979.
War’s communal impact is portrayed through various individual stories in the novel, ranging from the fictional Đông Village’s first war hero's suppressed love for his comrade’s widow to a family patriarch’s descent into insanity. Throughout No Man River, Dương is deeply concerned with the realities of northern village life in the context of a fierce international conflict bathed in socialist propaganda that demands personal sacrifice for collective revolution. These concerns radiate throughout the narrative as the author shifts the focus to the trials and tribulations of those left behind — the elderly men, and more notably, the women.
The novel prominently delineates Nhân’s struggle to mourn her husband’s death on the battlefield, while watching her twin sons enlist in the army. It complements this story with her daughter, Hạnh, who faces difficulties being accepted by the village after falling in love with a rival family’s son. The female villagers grapple with traditional Vietnamese views of womanhood bound to motherhood. For example, the village elders often regard single women in Đông Village as failures due to their inability to become mothers and raise the next generation. The villagers know that all the young men had gone to war and that there was no one left to marry, but this doesn't relieve societal pressures to become a “proper” woman.
No Man River is simultaneously about the presence of the emotional and psychological war in women’s lives and their collective fight to define themselves without men. This focus on women is all the more notable because they have been largely ignored in Vietnam’s war fiction prior to 1990. The trauma of war is bloody and persistent as its impacts linger far beyond the final battle and take root in those left behind, as the women’s stories underscore.
Author Dương Hướng. Photo via Quảng Nhin Online.
No Man River is also a story of one rural community’s resilience in the face of persistent violence. Traditional Vietnamese views clash with the new socialist dream as the author highlights the villagers’ struggle to build a new, progressive society. The novel concerns itself with a vast scope, from the French War, the American War, to the Sino-Vietnamese border war, without straying from its primary purpose as a realistic testament to the reverberating impacts of war in the northern countryside. Vạn fought in the battle at Điện Biên Phủ, while Nghĩa, a soldier in the novel’s present-day, had fought in the American War and its aftermath. Both soldiers are thematically united in No Man River by the collective trauma their families experience during their absence and the men’s inability to return unchanged by combat.
No Man River seamlessly introduces the river as metaphor and important setting. The pier is a key gathering place that serves as an example of Vietnam’s communal nature and collective consciousness, while the river’s depiction shows the author’s reverence for Vietnam’s land and people as it becomes a character of its own, personifying love and loss alongside calamity and comfort. The Đông villagers began to call the area the “River of Love,” known for its “gentle breeze and slowly flowing water [that] caressed their bodies like invisible hands, helping them forget their sorrows and hardships.” Hướng pairs this image with the local legend of a woman’s suicide, recalling that the women, “to this day will bathe there when they hope to wash away misfortune.” Both scenes illustrate the women’s hope and resilience caught in the river’s violent undercurrent.
“No Man River is simultaneously about the presence of the emotional and psychological war in women’s lives and their collective fight to define themselves without men.”
Amidst hope, there is pessimism and disappointment as witnessed from multiple perspectives: a young soldier who never returns to meet his son as well as the Nguyễn family’s lack of care for Great Uncle Xeng as he descends into madness. Tradition and cultural revolution continually clash in the village as the rich flaunt their electricity into the night and Vạn’s socialist ideals butt heads with an ancestral family curse. Similarly, the novel’s prominent theme of suppressed emotion strongly resonates throughout war hero Vạn’s internal battle over his unspoken love for Nhân, his fallen comrade’s widow. Vạn repeatedly confesses that “he knew in his heart he was in love with Nhân, but in his mind he considered those feelings a weakness” and a betrayal of the oath he swore to the Việt Minh Party.
In a world consistently defined by war and conflict, No Man River exists as a necessary contradiction to the propaganda-fueled narrative of the honorable soldier and loyal wife. The author doesn’t shy away from depicting soldiers coming home disfigured and encourages empathy for everyone living through wartime, regardless of whether they wear a uniform. There is no place for “American heroes or saviors” or pure, innocent victims in the novel. Instead, most of the characters are portrayed with agency to accept or reject their fates. The novel also debunks the myth of passive women left at home and the joyful soldiers returning with medals on their chests. At its core, No Man River emphasizes that suffering occurs regardless of one’s position in armed conflict. It appears in empty beds and children born out of wedlock. It’s unapologetically visible in the scars that cover the soldiers’ bodies and the roar of airplanes overhead. It’s undeniable in the rare letters home and sprawling war martyr cemeteries. The novel serves as a constant reminder that, in war, there are no heroes but only survivors.
