Product Description

A novel of the Vietnam War is written from the perspective of the North Vietnamese, profiles human characters who are wrenched by the same pain and fear as their enemies, and follows the hero's ten-year separation from his loved ones. Reprint. NYT.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14137 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781573225434
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Kien, the protagonist of this rambling and sometimes nearly incoherent but emotionally gripping account of the Vietnam war, is a 10-year veteran whose experiences bear a striking similarity to those of the author, a Hanoi writer who fought with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. The novel opens just after the war, with Kien working in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him, "a parade of horrific memories" that threatens his sanity, and he finds that writing about those years is the only way to purge them. Juxtaposing battle scenes with dreams and childhood remembrances as well as events in Kien's postwar life, the book builds to a climax of brutality. A trip to the front with Kien's childhood sweetheart ends with her noble act of sacrifice, and it becomes clear to the reader that, in Vietnam, purity and innocence exist only to be besmirched. Covering some of the same physical and thematic terrain as Novel Without a Name (see above), The Sorrow of War is often as chaotic in construction as the events it describes. In fact, it is untidy and uncontrolled, like the battlefield it conveys. The point of view slips willy-nilly from the third person to the first, without any clear semblance of organization. The inclusion of a deaf mute who falls for Kien, and acts for a while as a witness to his life, seems gratuitous. The faults of this book are also its strengths, however. Its raggedness aptly evokes the narrator's feverish view of a dangerous and unpredictable world. And its language possesses a ferocity of expression that strikes the reader with all the subtlety of a gut-punch. Polishing this rough jewel would, strangely, make it less precious.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
These two novelists, both of whom fought for North Vietnam, offer American readers a startlingly different perspective on the war.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
A novel addition to fiction from the Indochina conflict, this quasi-autobiographical story depicts a North Vietnamese infantryman trying to purge his grisly memories through writing. Sitting in his dingy Hanoi room, drinking day after day away, the central character, Kien, records in no set order his enlistment into the army, the bombing of his troop train, hellish firefights and napalming in the Central Highlands (an area superstitiously dubbed by Kien's comrades the "Jungle of the Screaming Souls"), his escape from an American patrol after the Tet offensive of '68, combat in Saigon's fall in '75, and his memory-piquing work on a postwar MIA detail. Each chunk of experience jostles the other, an intentional echo of the writer's struggle to describe the chaotic, while simultaneously attempting to find his own authorial voice. Thus Bao Ninh's work is half about war. If there is a message, it is that a survivor's reconciliation with savage memory is impossible--perhaps not the most original idea in war novels, but one worth hearing from the ex-enemy. Gilbert Taylor

Customer Reviews

What war does to human beings
When visiting Vietnam last year, a man stopped me outside the war rememberance museum in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. He carried a shrink wrapped stack of books three feet high and tried to sell me a knock-off copy of "The Sorrow of War". When I told him I'd read it, he broke into a bright smile. He then offered to sell me Greene's "The Quiet American". When I told him I'd read that too, his eyes sparkled, his smile stretched and he put his arm around my shoulders. He took me to meet his friends. He said something in Vietnamese to them. All of a sudden I felt like I was a rediscovered lost relative.

"The Sorrow of War" is a book that's not so much read as experienced. There is no escaping the intensity and naked reality presented. The author is a survivor of the American War who fought in the North Vietnamese Army, but Bao Ninh is kind to neither the North Vietnamese Army nor the Americans and its allies. There's no romanticism in this novel, only honesty.

Originally banned by the Communist government, the book proved so popular that the government reconsidered and lifted the ban. It's now a national treasure.

In my next life, when I'm a teacher, I will assign this to my class to be read back-to-back with Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried". These books could stop a war.

It is what it is...
To say nothing else, this is an interesting book. From a humanitarian standpoint, it is on par with Frank Elkin's diary, "The Heart of a Man," that his widow published after his A-4 was shot down off Oriskany in 1966. That novel is the only other work I have read that compares in what it may accomplish for the reader from an emotional understanding of the immense toll of the Vietnam War.

Yet, The Sorrow of War is different. First published in 1991, the book was a best seller in Vietnam - even though the communist party banned it. In reading the novel, the reason eventually becomes subtly obvious as the glorious struggle is painted in more realistic colors.

The author, Bao Ninh, was born in Hanoi in 1952, and he was one of only ten survivors of the 27th Youth Brigade during the conflict. In 1994, his work received the Independent Foreign fiction award. His fictional story unfolds in the Central Highlands where his main character, Kien, after years at war, is working in a Missing In Action Remains-Gathering Team. After that opening, there are no chapters, there is no coherent timeline, and there is no reference to much of anything but the simplest of human emotions.

At first, The Sorrow of War is strangely un-engaging. Honestly, I considered putting the book down several times early on in my reading. However, Bao Ninh does have something worth saying that is not explicitly spelled out in any of the pages as we aimlessly follow Kien in his memory of the war.

This book is not an easy read. The timeline shifts and changes without warning, and it is up to the reader to get into the head of a man who is severely damaged by the war and its apparent total destruction of his life. But, it is worth the effort.

Kien, a young man from a suburb of Hanoi when American jets first start to hammer Hanoi, eventually fights through the entire conflict to the gates of Saigon in 1975. Along the way, he loses everything - all his friends, his family and the love of his life - which has obviously obsessed and crippled him. In fact, the story is really a love story of sorts within a whirlwind of catastrophic memories of combat. The searing pain that he experiences in that regard seems to cauterize his substantial wounds.

The Sorrow of War is not a political statement or an assessment of right or wrong, who won or lost and why. There is not a single reference or mention of Ho Chi Minh, or any other national leader or commander in the entire book. In fact, Bao Ninh even seems to regard the enemy in a light that is completely dispassionate... almost strikingly familiar. He practically sees the enemy not unlike himself... as he sees all his friends... caught up in a struggle much bigger than sense can explain. It is as though no shred of personal regard for anything remains in this shell of a man.

There is no doubt that the communist party would not look with favor on what Bao Ninh has to say. Although the character Kien is committed to doing his part by joining the war, there is the over-riding fear that he has to go or face punishment. Eventually, he becomes a hardened warrior, accepting of whatever fate comes his way because he does not have any realistic hope of survival. He loses everything - even himself in the process.

Likewise, portrayals of the North Vietnamese Army are not much different than the robotic statements of indoctrination that many have come to associate with communist re-education. In ways, Bao Ninh paints the picture that the whole tragic effort was simply not what the common person was led to believe. Very few of those people are left... except in the memory of Kien, and almost no one enjoys a better life than what existed before the war. Few seem to even be awake in the eyes of man that are fixed in surreal memories of his former life.

In the end, The Sorrow of War is not your typical war novel. In many ways it is different than any other book I have ever read; however, "brilliant" is too complex a word to describe this work. Perhaps it is because the author, Bao Ninh, is from such a foreign culture or because his main character is so damaged, writing being the only way he can cope with life after the war. Consequently, Kien's memories, visions and timelines are jumbled. Additionally, there is no judgment of anything to the point of being almost absent of hatred, which strangely leaves one feeling un-invested in the characters in an equal manner. It is almost as though one is simply observing the main character's thoughts and consequently understanding completely.

The Sorrow of War is not a novel that will allow the reader to get in the head of the enemy to understand anything about the greater Vietnam War. Instead, the book offers something of an account of human suffering from the view of a young grunt caught in a protracted conflict. I cannot recommend this novel to anyone who cannot divorce himself from an appeal to humanity because the book is almost too matter of fact for that. It is just not that simple. Basically, the title says it all, and it is up to the reader to try to figure out what Bao Ninh is saying. I will probably have to read the book a second time to do that myself; however, that should not be too difficult because by the end, I found the Sorrow of War difficult to put down.

John Jay De Bellis

We have met the enemy, and he is us
Those of us who spent time 'in-country' during the conflict in Viet Nam know that American soldiers were taught, subtly if not overtly, that their enemy was something less than human. Demonizing the enemy--thinking of them as 'gooks,' 'slants,' as 'them' to our 'us'--is a standard wartime practice; it's far easier to fight those you consider less than your equal.

This book is clear evidence of the magnitude of this lie. Here, we meet the enemy and--as the wise old 'possom Pogo once said--he is us.

In 'The Sorrow of War,' Bao Ninh, a former NVA soldier, walks us through the life our enemy--detailing in precise, unassuming prose his daily life; his emotions, attitudes, causes, and feelings for those close to him and, of course, his enemy. It is a story that could, in many respects, have been written by a US soldier, except that it has a local feel, the rooted viewpoint of one who fights on the land where he lives. The language is poetic and the images sharp; it is a narrative full of a universal weariness, wisdom, experience and pain.

This is a must-read piece of literature for anyone trying to understand the Viet Nam conflict (which the Vietnamese call the American War), or war in general, in depth. It is at times slow going, but ultimately well worth the effort.

Susan O'Neill, Viet Nam veteran and author of Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam