A Tale of Lost Love.

How could I have loved him like that?

That opening line of Duong Thu Huong's "Beyond Illusions" (247 pages. Hyperion East) and the passage that follows offer the kind of brutal, incisive honesty that leaves absolutely no doubt why Huong has emerged as Vietnam's most acclaimed literary export. Linh, her young protagonist, sizes up her husband: "She stared at him in the green glow of dawn. Still sleeping soundly, he was both strange and familiar to her, like a waxen effigy. That face. The curve of the nose, those earlobes. He was the same man, the same flesh, that had once been a beacon inside her. Now, he no longer radiated life, love."

While this is a story of personal disillusionment and lost love, it's also a powerful political statement, the lament of a former true believer in the communist ideals proclaimed by her country's leaders. Hu-ong writes from bitter experience. During the Vietnam War, she was part of a theatrical Youth Brigade that entertained the troops on makeshift stages in the jungle and tunnels. It was such dangerous work that she was only one of three members of the 40-person group who survived. After victory in 1975, she became a screenwriter at the Fiction Film Studio in Hanoi but quickly ran into trouble with the censors. In 1987, during a brief period of liberalization, she published "Beyond Illusions"--now translated for the first time into English. But soon the government banned her writings, and she began publishing subsequent novels--like "Paradise of the Blind" and "Novel Without a Name" --abroad to growing critical acclaim. Her increasingly outspoken dissident views led to her expulsion from the Communist Party in 1990 and seven months' imprisonment in 1991. Today, the divorced mother of two still lives in Hanoi.

It's hard not to see Linh, the beautiful schoolteacher in "Beyond Illusions," as an emotional twin of the author, even though their stories differ. Linh grows up fully believing the myths of the revolution, all the slogans about justice and equality. She falls in love with Nguyen, a literature professor who initially shares her idealism. But Nguyen turns to journalism as a way to provide a meager living for his wife and daughter, only to find himself quickly sinking into the morass of lies that constitute communist Vietnam. He ignores the evidence of starvation, corruption and abuse of power to put food on the table. Linh, who has maintained an astonishing naivete, never questions what he is ...