The Postwar Body: The Literary Double in the Exile Literature of Linda Lê

The French-writing author, Linda Lê, broke all links with her homeland when she fled Vietnam in 1977 and did not return for twenty years. Yet the recurrence of a doppelgänger or literary double-figure in her oeuvre (Assier, Ollier), which is in many cases composed of one personage situated in or connected with war torn Vietnam and an exiled other in France, nonetheless betrays a desire to unify her split pre- and post-war selves in exile. In a series of progressive works, Calomnies [1993], Les dits d’un idiot [1995], Les trois Parques [1997] and Lame de fond [2012], an incestuous bond characterises the double-figure. The desire for the reunion of siblings separated by the crimes of their transgression and the event of war, signifies, we argue, the exile’s longing for a return to one’s origins and a pre-war, undivided self. Furthermore, as the doppelgänger evolves, so does Lê’s political engagement with the Vietnam War. The final reunion of the incestuous brother/sister double in Lame de fond demonstrates to us the tempering of Lê’s contemporary views on the Vietnam War and the unified homeland, just as her introduction of mixed-race protagonists also suggests a reconciliation of the split-self in exile.