Started reading "
Street Without Joy" just the other week.
Could never find a copy in Australia and I finally gave in and bought a digital copy through Google Play.
Also got "
The Sorrow Of War" from Google Play and although it's fiction, the novel is strongly based on the author's own experience as a North Vietnamese soldier fighting in the south during the Vietnam War. Had started reading a family friend's copy some years back but only got through the first few chapters before having to give it back, so I never got to finish it.
The author, Hoàng Ấu Phương, was only 13 years old when he joined the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade (mostly composed of teenagers) and was one of only ten survivors out of 500 at the wars end ten years later. He then served for another three years with a graves registration unit finding fallen comrades. Like many others, he was dismissed from the army when the government had no more use for him.
As a side note, of the ten survivors of the Glorious 27th, six are said to have committed suicide not long after they left the North Vietnamese Army.
He wrote the novel (under the pen name Bảo Ninh) as his graduation project for the Nguyen Du Writing School in Hanoi and although it was not officially published (as the communist Vietnamese government didn't agree with it's lack of "heroic struggle" portrayals) it was copied via roneo machine in 1991 and distributed privately through Vietnam (under the title The Destiny of Love) before being translated to English and offered to a British publishers where it received the name The Sorrow Of War.
This title seems more apt, given that early in the novel, the protagonist Kien is searching the Forest of Screaming Souls for the remains of fallen comrades from the 27th Battalion. He is the only survivor of the 27th, destroyed in that forest except for him.
It was important to the Vietnamese to recover their dead for burial after the war as they believed that if a person is not buried properly, their soul will wander forever. Traditional Vietnamese belief holds that Kien Muc Lien reached enlightenment as a young boy but his mother had been evil. At her death she was punished with eternal torment and so her son asked Buddha for help upon which Buddha instructed the boy in the Vu Lan ceremony (wandering souls ceremony AKA the Amnesty of Unquiet Spirits) to allow his mother's soul to find peace.
As might be guessed, this novel had a profound impact upon me even after a few chapters because it was the first time I encountered what the aftermath of the war was like for the Vietnamese who fought on the communist side. The author seems to be reaching for catharsis as much as for understanding of what happened to his teenage life and the spiritual aspects of his search resonate strongly in his book.
Hmm, apologies all, didn't mean for this to turn into a review of a fiction title but I really do feel this book is worth reading by anyone interested in the Vietnam War because most of what we have seen published is entirely from our sides perspective.