1st Edition
Bao Ninh's Contribution to Vietnamese and World Literature "The Sorrow of War" and his Short Stories
Bao Ninh's Contribution to Vietnamese and World Literature analyses and presents the works of Bao Ninh, the most well-known writer in modern Vietnamese literature. His works are renowned both in Vietnam and worldwide and his novel The Sorrow of War, which has been translated into more than 15 languages, is considered to be one of the classic works of war literature.
This book by two award-winning scholars, one in war literature and the other in war history, presents for the first time an overall assessment of Bao Ninh’s works, notably of his celebrated novel and his short stories. It outlines his life, setting it in the context of war-torn Vietnam whence he was a teenage soldier at the aged of seventeen in the North Vietnamese People's Army (NVPA), highlights the main themes of the corpus of his writings, inter alia of suffering and trauma of war, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of veterans, of the futility of war, discusses his approach to writing, compares his writings with others in war literature, and examines and assesses his especial place in world literature. This pioneering monograph of the scholarly evaluation of Bao Ninh himself and his works further engages in the discourse of his contribution to modern Vietnamese literature and world literature.
Encouraging a better understanding of wars and conflicts, the book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of modern Asian history, in particular the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian Studies, and Vietnamese and World literature.
Preface; Introduction Part I: The Setting 1. Bảo Ninh: Life and times of a maverick; 2. The Indochina War (1946-1954, 1964-1975); 3. War in History and War in Literature: Where is the Truth? Part II: The Sorrow of War 4. Understanding War from An Insider's Perspective: Self-conscious Narrator as a Witness in War; 5. Understanding the Double Trauma in The Sorrow of War Part III: Bao Ninh’s Short Stories 6. Understanding War From Peripheral Fragments about Humans; 7. Understanding War from the Perspective of a Male Dominant Voice Part IV: The Phenomenon Bao Ninh 8. Bao Ninh and Vietnam’s Image; Appendix; Index
Biography
Cao Kim Lan is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Literary Theory and Criticism, Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS), Hanoi, Vietnam.
Ooi Keat Gin is Professor of the Modern History of Brunei/Borneo at the Academy of Brunei Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei and Visiting Professor at the Korean Institute of ASEAN Studies, Busan University of Foreign Studies, South Korea.
