Huong Keenleyside

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Huong Keenleyside (born Nguyen Thi Huong) is a Vietnamese author who has had considerable success in her own country. Born in 1971 in Hanoi, she lived initally in her father's native village in Tan Yen District in Bac Giang Province. Her father died in 1981 leaving a family of nine, five of them younger than Huong. At the age of 12 her mother took him out of school to make bricks in order to help with the family finances. She escaped and went to work in Hanoi where she married and had a son followed a year later by a girl. Shortly after the birth of her girl her husband died. Shortly after completing a course for authors and poetry she met a British man who she married six months later and the moved to England in 1998, living mainly in York.

She has written a number of books. The last, Agent 022, was about her uncle who worked as a spy in the South Vietnamese Police Office for monitoring suspected North Vietnamese agents. There he was able to protect many Vietcong and other agents working for the North. The book is also a romantic novel as Agent Ngoc Lan was ordered to marry again.

She is currently overseeing the translation of Agent 022 into English while at the same time working on her next book.