Product Description

This is the semi-autobiographical account of a soldier's experiences. The hero of the story, Kien, is a captain. After 10 years of war and months as a MIA body-collector, Kien suffers a nervous breakdown in Hanoi as he tries to re-establish a relationship with his former sweetheart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126739 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-17
• Original language: Vietnamese
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From the Publisher
WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION AWARD. 'A magnificent achievement...takes its place alongside the greatest war novel of the century, All Quiet on the Western Front' Independent

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.

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest war novels from a century of war
Deeply moving account of war beginning as one of the few survivors of a Vietnamese unit looks for the bodies of dead comrades in the Jungle of Lost Souls - haunted by those who have died. And yet there are other ghosts - those who have lived but are carrying mental and emotional anguish, numbness and hopelessness.
Surely one of the greatest war novels to come out of a century of war, and should be essential reading for political leaders who think construction is as easy as destruction. A book that moves you to tears but somehow makes you more alive, and a tribute in a way to the resilience of the Vietnamese people in the face of barely imaginable horror.

Most moving story ever written
Having visited Vietnam I was impressed with the way the author wrote truthfully about the war and the impact upon the individual. Well worth reading if you want an insight into what really happened during this traumatic and horrendous time of Vietnamese history.

A War Novel Without Hate
This novel is both a remarkable work of literature (most importantly the translation is of an unusually high quality) and an account of the misery of war by someone who had clearly experienced it first-hand. The author is not interested in ideological self-justification (perhaps that is not necessary, given the nature of the onslaught suffered by this small nation), and it is indeed a novel written in sorrow and not in anger. If someone were only to read two books on Vietnam and the related conflict in Cambodia, I would suggest this one and The Gate, a harrowing factual account by someone who against all odds came out of one of Pol Pot's death camps alive.