The Sorrow of War : A Novel of North Vietnam

The daring & controversial novel that took the world by storm--a story of politics, selfhood, survival, & war. Heart-wrenching, fragmented, raw, former North Vietnamese solder Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, & the people who live there. Kien, a lone survivor from the Glorious 27th Youth brigade of the Vietcong, revisits the haunting sites of battles & relives a parade of horrors, as he grapples with his ghosts, his alcoholism & attempts to arrange his life in writing. Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, non-ideological tone, Ninh's now classic work has won worldwide acclaim & become an international bestseller. *Thân phân cua tình yêu* (in English: *The Sorrow of War* by Bao Ninh) is a novel of the Vietnamese War from the viewpoint of a North Vietnamese infantryman. Kien’s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows the area well – this was where, in the dry season of 1969, his battalion was obliterated by American napalm and helicopter gunfire. Kien was one of only ten survivors. This book is his attempt to understand the eleven years of his life he gave to a senseless war. Based on true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, this novel is a sincere, unglorified account of the true sorrows of war. Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there. Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, non-ideological tone, The Sorrow of War has won worldwide acclaim and become an international bestseller Annotation. The first novel of the Vietnam War written from the point of view of the North Vietnamese, The Sorrow of War has been hailed by critics not only as the best novel to emerge from the Vietnam experience, but as one of the greatest war novels of the century The Vietnam War As Seen Through The Eyes Of A North Vietnamese Infantryman. In A Series Of Flashbacks, As He Buries The Dead Following A Battle, The Narrator Recounts His 10 Years Of Service, The Comrades He Lost And The Way The War Ruined The Love Of His Life. The Author Is A Veteran Of The Nva's Glorious 27th Youth Brigade, A 500-man Unit From Which Only 10 Men Survived. He Lives In Hanoi. Bao Ninh ; Translated From The Vietnamese By Phan Thanh Hao ; Edited By Frank Palmos. Originally Published: Hanoi : Writers' Association Pub. House, 1991. The Sorrow of War - by turns bleak and poetic, pellucid and cunning - opens with Kien, an infantry cadre from Hanoi, engaged in the grim business of retrieving and burying the dead at the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war. From here, the novel ranges back to Kien's youth and the pains of adolescent love, and moves forward to his attempts, as a struggling writer in postwar Hanoi, to come to grips with the savageries he has witnessed, to make sense of death, love, and loss - and of his own survival. During the Vietnam War Bao Ninh served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred men who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of only ten who survived. The Sorrow of War is his autobiographical novel. Kien works in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him and the memory of war scenes are juxtaposed with dreams and remembrances of his childhood sweetheart. The Sorrow of War burns the tragedy of war in our minds. In this semi-autobiographical account of a soldier's experiences the hero of the story, Kien, is an army captain. After ten years of war and months as an MIA body collector, he suffers a nervous breakdown in Hanoi as he tries to re-establish a relationship with his former sweetheart

Winner of The Independent Foreign Fiction Award, this 'hauntingly beautiful novel, written by a North Vietnamese Army veteran, manages to humanize completely a people who up until now have usually been cast as robotic fanatics.' -Sunday Times

A semi-autobiographical account of a soldier's experiences. Kien is a captain. After 10 years of war and months as a MIA body-collector, Kien suffers a nervous breakdown in Hanoi as he tries to re-establish a relationship with his former sweetheart. On the banks of the Ya Crong Poco river, on the northern flank of the B3 battlefield in the Central Highlands, the Missing In Action Remains-Gathering Team awaits the dry season of 1975.