by Bao Ninh
It was during this period that I was attracted by this eccentric character. That’s why I tried reading his long stories, although it was difficult.
At first I tried to rearrange the manuscript pages into chronological order, to make the manuscript read like the sort of book I was familiar with. But it was useless. There was no chronological order at all. Any page seemed like the first, any page could have been the last. Even if the manuscript had been numbered, even if no pages had been burned, or moth-eaten, or withheld by the author, if by chance they were all there, this novel would still be a work created by turbulent, even manic inspirations.
One became immersed in each sequence, each page. Sometimes the descriptions were compelling. The long-forgotten name of a once-familiar battlefield moved me. The close-up fighting, the small details of the soldiers’ lives. The images of former colleagues appearing for just a moment, yet so clearly. The flow of the story continually changed. From beginning to end the novel consisted of blocks of images. A certain cluster of events, then disruptions, some event wiped off the page as if it had fallen into a hole in time. Many would say this was a disruption of the plot, a disconnection, a loss of perspective. They’d say this style proved the writer’s inherent weakness: his spirit was willing but his flesh wasn’t.
The very same scout platoon who on page one killed with frightening efficiency and were so skilled in battle were, on the next page, the dullest, clumsiest deadbeats imaginable. The author even turned some of them into ghosts, sorrowfully making them appear here and there, in the jungles, in dark corners, in dreams and nightmares. All of the scouts, one way or another, were killed. But then you read of them dragging themselves along the streets, living hand-to-mouth lives as city-dwellers in the post-war years.
And at the end of the day, just like the author, those ragged men became confident and happy, recalling their paradise years of long ago, remembering the smart, pretty girlfriends they’d had, recalling their naive and innocent confidence before the war. It was sad; although they had been excellent lovers, they were destined to be forever lonely. They had lost not only the capacity to live happily with others but also the capacity to be in love. The ghosts of the war haunted them and permeated their deteriorating lives.
As for the author, although he wrote ‘I’, who was he in that scout platoon? Was he any of those ghosts, or of those remains dug up in the jungle?
Was he among those kids from decent families who in fighting a war lost touch with the sources of culture? Those free spirits who were now full of prejudice?
All I knew was that the author had written because he had to write, not because he had to publish. He had to think on paper. Then of all things, he delivered everything to a lonely, mute woman, who could easily have destroyed his turbulent revelations.
Gradually, I permitted myself to read the story taking a more casual approach. I worked through the mountain of pages, one after the other, regardless of whether it seemed to be in sequence, or whether it was just a letter from his diary, or a draft of an article. Mixed among the pages I found musical scores, curriculum vitae, award certificates, a pack of cards, torn and worn and dirty, and certificates confirming that he had been wounded several times.
That relaxed reading greatly helped my understanding of him. Now, before my eyes the abandoned novel by our writer took on another form, in harmony with the reality it described.
I’ve copied almost everything, all the pages I acquired by chance from the woman. I’ve removed only a few which were completely illegible and some other mischievous notes and letters which were incomprehensible to a third person. I simply played the role of the Rubik cube player, arranging the order.
But while copying the pages and re-reading them I was astounded to recognise that inside his story were ideas and feelings and even situations of mine. It seemed that by some coincidence of words and plot my own life and the author’s had unexpectedly become entwined, enmeshed in each other. Slowly I began to realise that my earlier suspicions were true; I had known him during the war.
Yes, he was terribly changed, but I still recognised him. He was tall and slim, but not good-looking. He was stern, with wild eyes. His skin was grey, covered with small scars, brown from the sun and the gunpowder burns. His lips were tight. On his left cheek there was a deep crease. We had met each other one day along the road to war. We’d dragged ourselves through the red dust, through the mud, carrying sub-machine-guns on our shoulders, or packs on our backs. Bare-footed, on occasions. And both he and I, like the other ordinary soldiers of the war, shared one fate. We had shared all the vicissitudes, the defeats and victories, the happiness and suffering, the losses and gains. But each of us had been crushed by the war in a different way.
Each of us carried in his heart a separate war which in many ways was totally different, despite our common cause. We had different memories of people we’d known and of the war itself, and we had different destinies in the post-war years.
Our only post-war similarities stemmed from the fact that everyone had experienced difficult, painful and different fates.
But we also shared a common sorrow, the immense sorrow of war. It was a sublime sorrow, more sublime than happiness, and beyond suffering. It was thanks to our sorrow that we were able to escape the war, escape the continual killing and fighting, the terrible conditions of battle and the unhappiness of men in fierce and violent theatres of war.
It was also thanks to our mutual sorrow that we’ve been able to walk our respective roads again. Our lives may not be very happy, and they might well be sinful. But now we are living the most beautiful lives we could ever have hoped for, because it is a life in peace. Surely this was what the real author of this novel intended to say?
However, the sorrows of war had been much heavier for this author than they had been for me. His sorrows prevented him from relaxing by continually enticing him back into his past.
Perhaps that was not completely true. It may have been just an impasse of pessimism. Then again, his life may have been devoid of spiritual hope. Even so, I believe he derived some happiness from looking back down the road of his past.
His spirit had not been eroded by a cloudy memory. He could feel happy that his soul would find solace in the fountain of sentiments from his youth. He returned time and time again to his love, his friendship, his comradeship, those human bonds which had all helped us overcome the thousand sufferings of the war.
I envied his inspiration, his optimism in focusing back to the painful but glorious days. They were caring days, when we knew what we were living and fighting for and why we needed to suffer and sacrifice.
Those were the days when all of us were young, very pure and very sincere.
Praise
‘The violent upheavals of war have given painful birth to many outstanding works of literature, ranging from The Naked and the Dead to the Poems of Wilfred Owen. To these must now be added Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War.’
Economist
‘The Sorrow of War is a more complete and humanly engaging work of fiction than any written by an American about Vietnam. Its success derives largely from its formal inventiveness. Ninh’s multi-faceted approach to his material is a courageous and deliberate attempt to discover ways of overcoming its power to terrify and dehumanise… This unforced patterning allows him to describe terrible events without hysteria or evasiveness.’
London Review of Books
‘The Sorrow of War is a profound and tragic account of a survivor. At times lyrical and bleak, frequently intense and gruesome and occasionally blackly humorous, it reminds the reader that the scars of war are universal, and do not disappear with the signing of treaties.’
Eastern Express
‘A masterpiece of a novel; a brutal and shocking book of resistance, a mystical journey through the Vietnamese landscape, a tragic love story of lives torn apart by war… A bestseller in Vietnam; it deserves to be the same here.’
Militant
‘A no
vel of international significance: literate, highly readable, and immensely powerful.’
The List
‘As a testament to war in general and the Vietnam war in particular it is without parallel.’
Labour Briefing
‘The Vietnam war has been burned in our minds through a plethora of film and fiction but none has succeeded in translating so haunting and tragic a message as Bao Ninh’s first novel.’
Yorkshire Post
‘There are many Americans who have written along similar lines of memory and recall dreadful war and disappointing peace; but surely none has got so near to the truth as Bao Ninh. Any veteran of any war will identify with his inner struggle, and any woman who has seen her man go off to the front will be able to suffer with Phuong. This book should be required reading for anyone in American politics or policy-making.’
Tim Page, Guardian
‘A rare corrective to the overwhelming American literature of the war. As an informative contrast The Sorrow of War is valuable. It floats in place and time, shifting smoothly between personal memories of pre-war days and detached accounts of combat. Moving between poetic licence and understated description, it has a post-war calm and sadness.’
Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Bao Ninh was born in Hanoi in 1952. During the Vietnam war he served with 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. A huge bestseller in Vietnam, The Sorrow of War is his first novel.
Copyright
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448105595
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 1998
24
English translation copyright ©Martin Secker & Warburg 1993
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Originally published as Thân Phân Cua Tinh Yêu by Nhà Xuät Ban Hoi Nha Van (Writers’ Association Publishing House, Hanoi, 1991)
First published in Great Britain by
Martin Secker & Warburg Limited in 1994
Vintage
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780749397111
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