The Sorrow of War @ richardeward.com

The Sorrow of War
by Bao Ninh
from Riverhead Trade

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• First novel intrigues, then falls into disarray
  The Sorrow of War is Ninh's first novel, and it remains at the grade of an author still grappling with technique and style. This novel about the Vietnam War is a halting creation, a confused jumble of narratives which fail to adhere. There are several disjointed themes in the novel: Kien the soldier at war, Kien the depressed post-war author, and Kien the lover. These strands are awkwardly woven together, and further confused by constant chronological switching.
  The novel provides scant guidance as to... more info

• The "All Quiet on the Western Front" of the Vietnam War
  Like several other reviewers, I bought a cheap ripoff copy of this book from a street peddler (in my case a one-legged woman obviously of an age to have been a victim of the war herself) in Saigon last week. I originally bought it as a charity contribution to her, but when I started reading it on the plane coming home, I literally couldn't sleep until I finished it. It's an astonishingly honest and brutal depiction of the tragedy of a North Vietnam soldier desensitized to his own humanity after ten years at... more info

• Sorrow indeed!
  Bao Ninh's book is a difficult read, due in part to the translation, I suspect. Other reviewers have also made this observation. The book offers a rare look at the war from the view of an NVA soldier. Ninh writes in a highly unusual style -- difficult to understand without a good deal of thought. Duong Tu Huong, another well-known Vietnamese writer of Ninh's generation, is more accessible for Western readers in my judgment. The veteran who narrates this book is a tortured soul, maybe not entirely sane.... more info

• A human being's duty on this earth is to live, not to kill
  In his novel in a novel Bao Ninh gives us a rare insight into the war scene of those who beat the Americans and their allies in Vietnam. His sometimes brutally violent and emotional picture shows that war everywhere is a `Jungle of Screaming Souls', causing psychological ruin and familial and social destruction. For the rest of their lives, it will leave deep inextinguishable scars in those who were lucky to survive
  The horror scenes resemble pictures of Hieronymus Bosch: `only his skeleton was... more info

Similar Products: