The daring and controversial novel that took the world by storm—a story of politics, selfhood, survival, and war.
Heart-wrenching, fragmented, raw, former Vietcong soldier Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed everything.
In this novel of North Vietnam, 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.
Published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, non-ideological tone, this now classic work has won worldwide acclaim and become an international bestseller.
“Vaults over all the American fiction that came out of the Vietnam War to take its place alongside the greatest war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. This is to understate its qualities, for, unlike All Quiet, it is 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.” —The Washington Post
“Powerful . . . 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 gives the book its tragic power.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
(A special thank you to book club member, Eydis West for the suggestion.)