This seventh volume in the "Voices from Vietnam" series introduces U. S. readers to another major figure in modern Vietnamese letters: Doan Le. Noted for her versatility of style and her originality, she writes tales that are intensely human and universal, exploring such subjects as greed, marriage, divorce, aging and human rights. For the scholar, these stories give insight into Vietnamese culture after the "renovation". For the general reader, these are stories that explore all the subtle enigmas of the human heart. 

As Wayne Karlin notes in his introduction, "[She] is a master of allegory and gently complex satire...her stories can often be fantastical—Sholom Aleichem's village of Helm channeled by Kafka through Our Town—or they can be deeply personal and realistic. In both cases they grow unabashedly from the real vicissitudes of her life."

Beginning in Vietnam shortly after the end of the American war and ending sometime in the 21st century, this 8th volume of Curbstone's Voices from Vietnam Series follows the life of Nguyen Thi My Tiep, a woman writer and a revolutionary, whose girlhood is spent as a guerrilla fighter, and whose post-war life becomes a search for personal liberation and individual love. Tiep's struggles are seamlessly connected to the changes her country is going through, as Da Ngan's daring and controversial novel draws us into the life of a woman who insists on leading a meaningful and honest life—as a citizen, as a daughter, as a mother, as a writer, and as a lover who pursues her own sexuality.