{"product_id":"the-naked-eye-9780811217392","title":"The Naked Eye","description":"A precocious Vietnamese high school student -- known as the pupil with \"the iron blouse\"--in Ho Chi Minh City is invited to an International Youth Conference in East Berlin. But, in East Berlin, as she is preparing to present her paper in Russian on \"Vietnam as a Victim of American Imperialism,\" she is abruptly kidnapped and taken to a small town in West Germany. After a strange spell of domestic-sexual boredom with her lover-abductor--and though \"the Berlin Wall was said to be more difficult to break through than the Great Wall of China\" -- she escapes on a train to Moscow . . . but mistakenly arrives in Paris. Alone, broke, and in a completely foreign land, Anh (her false name) loses herself in the films of Catherine Deneuve as her real adventures begin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Dreamy, meditative, and filled with the gritty everyday perils of a person living somewhere without papers (at one point Anh is subjected to some vampire-like skin experiments), \u003cem\u003eThe Naked Eye\u003c\/em\u003e is a novel that is as surprising as it is delightful--each of the thirteen chapters titled after and framed by one of Deneuve's films. \"As far as I was concerned,\" the narrator says while watching Deneuve on the screen, \"the only woman in the world was you, and so I did not exist.\" By the time 1989 comes along and the Iron Curtain falls, story and viewer have morphed into the dislocating beauty of both dancer and dance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New Directions Publishing Corporation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/26\/2009\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780811217392\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.45lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 6.80h x 4.90w x 0.60d","brand":"Yoko Tawada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42917042258101,"sku":"9780811217392","price":14.41,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_4896e3a4-f8c2-4ffc-84f0-dee1543b1125.jpg?v=1687276076","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-naked-eye-9780811217392","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}