The Sorrow of War

The Sorrow of War is Vietnam’s counterpart to the works of Tim O’Brien. Bao Ninh was one of ten survivors from the 500 men who went south with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade in 1969. His narrator, Kien, is clearly an alter ego. In this non-linear, densely woven story, Kien moves through collecting the dead and missing in the Forest of Screaming Souls just after the armistice is signed, years of desperate and horrifying combat with a scout platoon, and the alcoholic shadow of a life in Hanoi driven by the external power of a Novel inside him.

The counterweight to Kien’s story is that of Phoung, his childhood sweetheart whose innocence is taken forever by the war, the person who Kien is first complicit in destroying, and whom he cannot ever save. The Sorrow of War is a strange, tough, sentimental novel. Its genius and popularity in Communist Vietnam is proof enough that even the victorious walk away deeply wounded. This is an important book for anyone curious about how the Vietnamese saw their ‘American War’.