Bảo Ninh (born on October 18, 1952) is a Vietnamese novelist and short story writer.

His real name is Hoàng Ấu Phương and he was born in Nghệ An province (his ancestors were from Quảng Bình province), Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, he served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of ten who survived.

The Sorrow of War

A work of literature that in English Version laid the international foundation of the new wave of post-war Vietnamese authors, most of whom have found safe haven outside Vietnam, although the Sorrow's author Bao Ninh has preferred to remain in Vietnam. Bao Ninh is now (2012) a successful essayist, though his early work as a short story writer focused primarily on stories about the Vietnam War. Bảo Ninh shot into the local prominence in Hanoi with his debut novel, Thân phận của tình yêu, (The Destiny of Love) published in roneo form (similar to photocopying) in Hanoi, before 1990. Phan Thanh Hao is credited with bringing the manuscript to the attention of a London publisher (Secker & Warburg) whose editor Geoffrey Mulligan hastily sought veteran Australian Vietnam War Correspondent and author of the successful Vietnam War book 'Ridding the Devils' (Bantam, 1990, Sydney), to write the English Version based on the raw Thanh Hao translation.

Publishing background: Bao Ninh stated he had read 'Ridding the Devils', translated into Vietnamese by Phan Thanh Hao (Red River, 1990), and from that point would accept only an author with genuine knowledge and experience of the Vietnam War capable of fully comprehending the nuances of his novel, to write the English Version. After several meetings with Hao and the author in Hanoi, Palmos wrote the entire book from the photocopied manuscript over seven months from his home in Perth, Western Australia, during 1992-3, but travelled widely throughout Vietnam to check location details, and fine language detail with Bao Ninh and Thanh Hao. 'The Sorrow of War' was not published in Vietnam in book form, in Vietnamese, until at least ten years after its publication in English, and thence in fourteen other languages. It was not approved for publication by the Communist leaders of that time. Since 2007 authors have been given more freedom.

The UK Independent newspaper judged 'Sorrow of War' Best Foreign Book of 1994, with all prize money equally shared by the author Bao Ninh, the first translator Phan Thanh Hao and the author of the final English Version, Frank Palmos. Foreign language editions used the Palmos English Version for their translated editions.The book had immediate acclaim worldwide, especially in the USA. In 2010 the prestigeous Society of Authors of London listed the Thanh Hao-Frank Palmos translation of 'Sorrow' as one of the 'Best 50 Translations' of the previous century, sharing the honor with works such as War and Peace and The Tin Drum.

The English Version by Frank Palmos and Phan Thanh Hao was published in 1994, with the title The Sorrow of War, which became a widely acclaimed novel, with some critics placing the work among the most moving war novels of all time, with British author-photographer Tim Page and others comparing it favorably to Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front.' Counterfeits of the English language edition then became widely available in Vietnam for the tourist trade.^[1] Counterfeit sales of 'Sorrow' have far exceeded officially printed book sales. Counterfit sales were unofficially, conservatively estimated (by street sellers Saigon, Hanoi) at one hundred per week consistently over ten years.

Bao Ninh today (2012) lives a humble, peaceful life in one of the older suburbs of Hanoi, not far from the Red River. Irregular visits from fellow author Palmos and occasionally other senior war correspondents have been a highlight of his quiet existence.

Sorrow of War opens with a remarkable word picture of soldiers on a postwar MIA mission to collect the bones of fallen comrades to be reburied with honor. The first paragraphs are some of the finest introductions to the harrowing story that was the Vietnam War, with the MIA team finding their way back to the Jungle of Screaming Souls, where reminiscing takes hold. Thus begins the nonlinear narrative by Kien, a North Vietnamese soldier during the Vietnam War, chronicling his loss of innocence, his love, and his anguish (sorrow and sadness) at the memories of war, a short summary of the novel follows:

Kien is a soldier who seems to have a never-ending source of luck in his battles, for whenever all of the troops in his platoon die, he survives. The novel starts with him riding in a MIA Remains-Gathering Truck charged with the collection of bodies in the Jungle of Screaming Souls where Kien's first team of soldiers, the 27th Battalion was eliminated except for him. This scene begins many flashbacks that tie together the novel and are almost unable to be discerned for their chronological order. The story that the reader learns to follow is that of the love affair between Kien and his childhood sweetheart, Phuong, who he constantly references at the beginning of the story but only near the end do the largest events in their history take place. The subject then falls upon the novel being written by Kien and how he seems fated to write it by his survival from these battles and he feels that its completion will bring solace. Once the novel is completed, a mute girl who Kien began seeing when drunk to use to bounce his ideas off, gained a hold of the text while Kien was attempting to burn the pages. This burning of all his work is an allusion to what is told of Kien's artist father who fell into a similar slump after Kien's mother's divorce and burned all of the paintings he had painted over the years. The novel ends with an excerpt from a new narrator who is said to have found Kien's novel from this mute woman. He talks about the nonsensical order and grave subject matter but also its entrancing nature and how he felt that it needed to be published. The novel weaves back and forth between tales of unfulfilled love and the narrative of war, which fails to

fulfill its own objectives. The tale is hauntingly told, verging on poetry::The sorrow of war inside a soldier's mind was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk.

At one level, the novel can be said to be about effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for love::It was hard to remember a time when his whole personality and character had been intact, a time before the cruelty and the destruction of war had warped his soul. A time when he had been deeply in love, passionate, aching with desire, hilariously frivolous and light-hearted, or quickly depressed by love and suffering. Or blushing in embarrassment. When he, too, was worthy of being a lover and in love …:But war was a world with no home, no roof, no comforts. A happy journey, of endless drifting. War was a world without real men, without real women, without feeling.

On another level, it is about the horrors, and the eventual futility of war. The novel is openly critical of communist propaganda, e.g., the slogans that ban young people from enjoying sex, love, and marriage - these are the "Three Don'ts" in the pre-war communist heterodoxy. At another point, Kien sympathizes with the owner of a coffee plantation in the South, who says he does not care for the government, neither north nor south, the main aim is that people should be happy. There is no joy even in the eventual victory, only grim fatigue among the heaped up corpses at Saigon airport after the American withdrawal.

Possibly due to these nuances, the novel was briefly banned after its overseas release in 1991. However, with the winds of liberalization sweeping Vietnam in the 1990s, the immensely popular book could not be suppressed.

The book has also gained wide readership in the South where it is one of the few books to present the story from the other side of the Civil War. Admirably, Bảo Ninh does this without blaming the other side in any way. Another work in this vein is Novel without a Name by Duong Thu Huong. In 2005, it was republished in Vietnam under its original name, The Understanding of Love (Thân phận của tình yêu); another edition in 2006 adopted the Vietnamese version of the English title (Nỗi buồn chiến tranh).

Other writings

Bảo Ninh has written a second novel, Steppe, that he is reluctant to publish,^[2] possibly because he feels it is not as natural as his earlier work.

A short story by Bảo Ninh, "A Marker on the Side of the Boat" (Khắc dấu mạn thuyền), translated by Linh Dinh, is included in the anthology Night, Again.

References

1. ^ The original author of this entry bought his counterfeit copy from a vendor in Hanoi.
2. ^ Goldenberg, Suzanne (2006-11-19). "Why Vietnam's best-known author has stayed silent". The Observer. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1951690,00.html. Retrieved 2007-03-05.