 A teacher in remote Sơn La province for 10 years, he now runs a restaurant in Hanoi a stone's throw from a much-bombed bridge on the Red River.At 45, he has never traveled abroad [true as of 1996, when this piece was written].Considering the paucity of translated books in Vietnam, even after the easing of state censorship, Thiệp's eclectic reading list, as revealed in his own essays and interviews, is an index to the mental life of a contemporary Hanoi intellectual