The story:
Semi-autobiographical in nature, the novel's protagonist, Kien, is a lone survivor of his brigade and a ten year veteran of the war. When the book opens, he is part of an MIA body collection team. It is through his memories of the last ten years that we see how the war has wasted his youth and that of his countrymen. Merging his memories of the past with images of the present onto paper, Kien writes in order to exorcise his demons of the war and to try to cope with the hopeless present which he had sacrificed his youth fighting for. To Kien, writing is the only way he can perform his last duty as a soldier, which is "to expose the realities of war and to tear aside conventional images."
But beneath all his anguished memories and images of death and destruction, there lies a bitter sweet love story about him and his childhood sweetheart who were parted by the fortunes of war. It is this love story, so ironically destroyed by war, that makes this novel the saddest story this reviewer has ever read. No where has there ever been a more pitiful tale of unnecessary loss and suffering as in this book. But what makes this book really sad is that all the loss and suffering endured at all levels of Vietnamese life-- from the loss of youth, family, life, tradition, and love-- is all in vain. The future that Kien had fought for as a youth never materialises, and in the mean time, he has lost all that was ever meaningful to him. This is the real sorrow of war, and it is a sorrow that is shared by all alike, whether victor or foe (not the Americans, but the south Vietnamese). This is a highly recommended book not just for anyone interested in the human story of war, but for anyone who wants to know about the Vietnam conflict from another point of view besides that of the whining Americans

About the author:
Born in 1952, Baoh Ninh served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade during the Vietnam war. Out of the five hundred youths who went to war with the brigade in 1969, Bao Ninh was only one out of it's ten survivors. It is therefore no coincidence that war should be the subject of his first work it was a seminal experience which influenced his whole life.






Buchdaten:
THE SORROW OF WAR by Bao Ninh
Broschiert - 272 Seiten - Minerva
Erscheinungsdatum: 31. Oktober 1994
ISBN: 074939711X
Preis: € 11,50