What is the setting of Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong?

The present day setting is mid-seventies Russia where Hang has been sent to work as an “exported worker”. She lives in a communist bloc with other Vietnamese exported workers. Though she works in a textile factory and does not hawk imported goods, many Vietnamese do to make extra income. In the Russia she is living in she feels invisible—as if she is not seen at all. And when she is noticed she is humiliated by the racist assumptions presumed by the Russians. She is homesick for Vietnam and dislikes being in this cold, lonely and foreign place.