A fair literary work, an excellent portrayal of Viet Nam by the North.

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	• The Sorrow of War Bao Ninh Riverhead Trade, 1996 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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 complete, like that of a frog thrown into a mud patch. Crows had pecked away Car's face; his mouth was full of mud and rotting leaves.'
It is a world of hunger, malaria, ulcers, hallucinations and nightmares (`groups of headless black American soldiers carrying lanterns aloft'); not only of heroic battles, but also of desertions and political indoctrination (`the anti-intellectual atmosphere of the state ideologies').
The losses are tremendous: `the short story of my life. First my brothers, then my mother, then my husband, then my son.'
After the war, integration in the civil society is difficult: `impoverishes demobilized soldiers, playing cards, smoking pot and other weeds, most of them unemployed.' Family lives and loves from before the war are completely shattered.

For Bao Ninh, `the divine war had paid him for all his suffering and losses with more suffering and losses at home.'
He rote this book, `to rid myself of these devils, to put my tormented soul finally to rest instead of letting it float in a pool of shame and sorrow.'

This `Path of no Glory' should not be missed.

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A fair literary work, an excellent portrayal of Viet Nam by the North.

This text does indeed read like a journal. The closing of the book suggests that it is indeed a journalish/novel discovered. I'm left to wonder if the book was written like this on purpose, or if ineed there was a 'discovered memoir.'

That said, it jumps around alot, but encompases the main character's throughout, and therefore shows the lifetime effect of the war.

My father was a front line linguist in the army, and never talks about it. I have a little understanding as to why.

While this text 'humanizes' the North Vietnamese, by all means, as some comments suggest, they were not the helpless victim. Forget not the shameful acts of so-called academia in the poor and hate treatment to our own soldiers upon returning from Nam. Grr!

Not a great literary text, but definately a good journal to give insight into war.

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The destiny of war

Bao Ninh's only novel is a memorable one. "The Sorrow of War" was originally published in Vietnam in 1991 under the title "The Destiny of Love". Indeed, the book is both a war novel and a love story. The story's protagonist is Kien, a war veteran who served 10 years in the North Vietnamese army. He suffered through a tumultuous separation from his childhood sweetheart early in the war, only to be reunited with her later in life (but earlier in the book).

Many reviewers have pointed out that "The Sorrow of War" is chaotic in its story-telling, that the narration rambles, and the timeline whipsaws the reader from the distant past to the present. All true points. Although the book is a slender 224 pages, the herky-jerky style makes for an unsettling read. But Ninh's approach is highly effective. He conveys the emotional and physical anguish of Kien and those around him poignantly, mimicking in his style the angst of his characters.

Word has it that Bao Ninh has written a second novel, but isn't satisfied enough to publish it. That could well be. The literary success of "The Sorrow of War" won't be easy for him to match, or for any other writer taking on the subject of 20th-century conflict.

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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. Unlike most Vietnamese, he is cut off from a living community. What he has are his memories and the ghosts of his friends. He is memorable, disturbing, but not easy to know.

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A Must Read!

If you want to understand what it was like to fight the war from the other side, The Sorrow of War is a must read. The author, Bao Ninh, a North Vietnamese regular, fought for ten years, not 365 days. This book puts a face on those nameless NVA soldiers who died in what the Vietnamese call "The American War." Bao Ninh is the Tim O'Brien of Vietnam and the two novels - The Sorrow of War and The Things They Carried - are all you need to understand the life of the grunt and the effects of war on the soldiers of both sides.

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