Set in the late twentieth century, Hanoi Blues explores the political fear and struggle for survival and true freedom by the Vietnamese people after the violent upheavals of the earlier part of the century. The reader is placed directly within the disturbing situation created by the current totalitarian regime with its oppressive atmosphere and startling mix of progress, prosperity and poverty. The central characters are a young globe-trotting French journalist and her lover, a radical Vietnamese artist. As we follow their intimate relationship through her eyes, we are progressively confronted with dilemmas of cultural differences in sexual relationships, public opinion, omnipresent manipulative propaganda, varying concepts of freedom, and customs of society with its particular prejudices. The reader shares in their mutual passions, separation and loss with equal intensity. Inspired by the author's own experiences of living in the country, this story resounds with stark authenticity.