Irrawaddy Tango - Hardcover

Law-Yone, Wendy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679421920 ISBN 13: 9780679421924

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994

Synopsis

In a novel that spans five decades, a tango-dancing Asian beauty rises from her close-knit village life and impulsively marries a powerful military man, who will become her country's dictator. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

Tango, the picaresque and sassy heroine of Law-Yone's second novel (after The Coffin Tree ), rides her flair for dancing from obscurity in the backwater village of Irrawaddy to the highest position available to a woman in the fictional Asian nation of Daway: wife of its sadistic, stupid dictator. She later becomes a political prisoner, an exile and, finally, a murderer, caught up in a whirlwind of events that leaves her alienated, rootless and reduced to an existential stupor. Relentlessly wisecracking and notably lacking in insight, Tango's first-person narration quickly wears thin; the first three quarters of the text completely fail to prepare the reader for her striking transformation into a world-weary matron at the novel's close. Although later chapters have greater focus and narrative tension, an excessive reliance on literary allusion rings false, since nothing in Tango's background suggests she would have such knowledge. Law-Yone tackles a worthy theme--the inevitable, destructive alienation felt by thoughtful Third World exiles both abroad and at home--and the novel's final section is gripping, but the bulk of it reads like a first draft.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Until she was 11, the young girl growing up in the Irrawaddy region of the fictional Asian country of Daya was known as Mew, because she was as distant and selfish as a cat. Then a village boy, Carlos, returns from studying in Argentina and teaches her the tango. Tango, as she is now known, and Carlos dance their way into the finals of a talent contest in the capital, where Tango catches the eye of a young colonel. Quickly they marry, and even more quickly her new husband engineers a coup and gains control of the country. He becomes a dictator/monster in the style of Idi Amin; he even takes his nickname, Supremo--given to him because of his fondness for Supremo Ice Cream--and makes it his official title. After several subservient years in marriage, Tango is kidnapped by rebel forces, beginning a spiral that will move her through the jungles of Daya, into prison, out to America, and then, years later, back to Daya. Law-Yone's prose, while developing a frighteningly familiar scenario, is delightful and witty, and Tango is a lively, smart wisecracker who, despite the gravity of her world, keeps us laughing. David Cline

In her second novel, Law-Yone has created another Asian female protagonist ravaged by the inhumanity of a cruel and crazy world dominated by impotent old men. The titular heroine grows up in the small, insular town of Irrawaddy and dreams of one day making it in the big wide world. Her only claim to fame is her knack for the Tango, which gets her the attention of the then-incubating strongman of the country, the Supremo. Her marriage and her life are irrevocably lost when she is kidnapped by an ethnic guerrilla group fighting for independence and the Supremo refuses to bail her out. Even though the novel is set in an imaginary country called Daya, the almost surreal mixture of East and West, the totalitarian tendencies, the ethnic strife, and the general lack of sense in daily life aptly suggest a number of South Asian countries. While Law-Yone's superb use of language is worthy of the highest praise, this reviewer has strong reservations about her seeming infatuation with detailing sexual torture and mutilation. Recommended for large literature collections.
- Cherry W. Li, Santa Monica Coll. Lib., Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679421920
• ISBN 13: 9780679421924
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 289