During the Vietnam War Bao Ninh served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred men who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of only ten who survived. The Sorrow of War is his autobiographical novel. Kien works in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him and the memory of war scenes are juxtaposed with dreams and remembrances of his childhood sweetheart. The Sorrow of War burns the tragedy of war in our minds.
"The first critical portrayal of life in the North Vietnamese army ever to appear in Vietnam . . . The censors were evidently moved by the book's unflinching sincerity and Ninh's literary gifts." —Time
"Vaults over all the American fiction that came out of the Vietnam War to take its place alongside the greatest war novel of the century, All Quiet on the Western Front. And this is to understate its qualities, for, unlike All Quiet, it is a novel about much more than war. A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful, agonizing love story." —The Independent
"Dramatic . . . Chronicle[s] the wrecked lives of North Vietnamese soldiers who enter the war with blazing idealism, only to sink deeper into disillusionment and pessimism as everything they know falls apart around them . . . Will force American readers to acknowledge how little they still understand of the long war that left such a legacy of grief and guilt in their own country." —The Washington Post
"Powerful . . . Make[s] North Vietnamese soldiers human, wrenched by the same fear and pain as young Americans. A remarkable emotional intensity builds as the author mixes harrowing flashback scenes from the war with images from his pastoral youth, from his heartbreaking homecoming after a decade away, and finally from the nightmare calamity that ties everything else together and gives the book its tragic power . . . Finally put[s] an acceptable human face on a group of people long without one. You will never think of North Vietnam and its people the same way again." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
"An unputdownable novel. It should win the Pulitzer Prize." —The Guardian
During the Vietnam War Bao Ninh served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred men who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of only ten who survived. The Sorrow of War is his autobiographical novel. Kien works in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him and the memory of war scenes are juxtaposed with dreams and remembrances of his childhood sweetheart. The Sorrow of War burns the tragedy of war in our minds.
Praise
"The first critical portrayal of life in the North Vietnamese army ever to appear in Vietnam . . . The censors were evidently moved by the book's unflinching sincerity and Ninh's literary gifts." —Time
"Vaults over all the American fiction that came out of the Vietnam War to take its place alongside the greatest war novel of the century, All Quiet on the Western Front. And this is to understate its qualities, for, unlike All Quiet, it is a novel about much more than war. A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful, agonizing love story." —The Independent
"Dramatic . . . Chronicle[s] the wrecked lives of North Vietnamese soldiers who enter the war with blazing idealism, only to sink deeper into disillusionment and pessimism as everything they know falls apart around them . . . Will force American readers to acknowledge how little they still understand of the long war that left such a legacy of grief and guilt in their own country." —The Washington Post
"Powerful . . . Make[s] North Vietnamese soldiers human, wrenched by the same fear and pain as young Americans. A remarkable emotional intensity builds as the author mixes harrowing flashback scenes from the war with images from his pastoral youth, from his heartbreaking homecoming after a decade away, and finally from the nightmare calamity that ties everything else together and gives the book its tragic power . . . Finally put[s] an acceptable human face on a group of people long without one. You will never think of North Vietnam and its people the same way again." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
"An unputdownable novel. It should win the Pulitzer Prize." —The Guardian
