Bao Ninh

Based on the true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, The Sorrow of War is revered as the ‘All Quiet on the Western Front for our era’.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.'A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful agonising love story... a magnificent achievement' IndependentTRANSLATED BY FRANK PALMOS AND PHAN THANH HAOThis series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

Breaking a thirty-year silence, B?o Ninh has permitted at last the publication of a new work in English. Ninh is perhaps Vietnam's foremost chronicler of the war, which he joined at age 17. Bringing to life the full range of his inventive and poetic language, Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran are granting to English readers B?o Ninh's first book-length work since The Sorrow of War, which catapulted him to fame and which was banned in Vietnam until 2006. In Hà N?i at Midnight, ten stories are appearing in the West for the first time.Juxtaposed with tranquility and geniality are abandoned landscapes and defoliated forests. Polluted rivers and streams, the war-torn sky, pungent air filled with the stench of decomposing human corpses, and the deafening roar of helicopters and bombers hovering in the gloom dominate the settings of B?o Ninh's stories.Intertwined with these horrific images are human tears shed during farewell ceremonies, when recruits are separated from their loved ones, when parents live in anxiety and hope while their children are fighting in remote regions, and when soldiers bury their comrades and burden themselves with the fallen's unfulfilled wishes. Hà N?i at Midnight delineates the complex outpourings of war and the way it remakes human relationships.

»Ett humanistiskt mästerverk.« Stefan Eklund, Svenska DagbladetEfter Saigons fall hade den nordvietnamesiske soldaten Kien i uppdrag att samla ihop de utspridda liken efter alla döda. Långt senare försöker han istället samla ihop sig själv genom att teckna ned sina spridda minnen från kriget och det som blev kvar av vänner, familj och hans stora ungdomskärlek. Resultatet blir en bok om hopp och besvikelse, om liv och död om krigets alla sorger. Bao Ninhs moderna klassiker Krigets sorger har lästs världen över som den stora vietnamesiska skildringen av Vietnamkriget. Det är en uppgörelse med krigets helvete och en gripande kärlekshistoria, men framför allt är det en intensiv och djupt solidarisk skildring av oss människor och våra drömmar. »Aldrig har jag läst en lika spröd och vacker helvetesskildring.« Gunnar Bergdahl, Göteborgs-PostenBao Ninh föddes 1952 i centrala Vietnam och lever idag i Hanoi. Han stred under sex år i den nordvietnamesiska 27:e ungdomsbrigaden och i likhet med sin romanperson Kien var han en av endast en handfull överlevande i sin brigad. Krigets sorger är den enda roman han givit ut.Förord av Mats Kempe.

The daring and controversial novel that took the world by storm--a story of politics, selfhood, survival, and 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, and the people who live there. Kien, a lone survivor from the Glorious 27th Youth brigade of the Vietcong, revisits the haunting sites of battles and relives a parade of horrors, as he grapples with his ghosts, his alcoholism and 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 and become an international bestseller.

Kienâ??s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. 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 revered as the â??All Quiet on the Western Front for our eraâ??.