Making a Whore

From the highly controversial writer, reporter, and satirist Vũ Trọng Phụng, Making a Whore is an exposé of the so-called progressive 'Westernised' ideals of sexuality in 1930s colonial Vietnam.

The novel follows the life of Huyền, a young woman born into Hà Nội’s upper-class, whose innocent interest in her mother’s pregnancy is casually ‘You’ll find out when you get married’. Lacking sexual education from her family, Huyền turns to her peers for answers, opening up a world of childish whispers about physical pleasure.

As polite society demands Huyền to remain virtuous, she enters into adulthood with both the will to know and the will to suppress a young woman’s burning physical desires. The torments of her sexual frustration spiral Huyền into a life of debauchery; one she might not ever want to turn back from

by Vũ Trọng Phụng