Contents

1.      Historical Background

2.      Socio-Political Concepts

3.     Language

4.     Literary Periods

5.     Major Vietnamese Writers

6.     Literary Works

SOCIO-POLITICAL CONCEPTS

The politics of Vietnam are defined by a single-party socialist republic framework, where the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam is the Party Leader and head of the Politburo, holding the highest position in the one party system. The President of Vietnam is the head of state, and the Prime Minister of Vietnam is the head of the government in a one party system led by the Communist Party of Vietnam. Executive power is exercised by the government and the President of Vietnam. Legislative is vested in the National Assembly of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Quốc hội Việt Nam). The Judiciary is independent of the executive. The parliament adopted the current Constitution of Vietnam; its fifth, on 28 November 2013.

Coat of Arms from 1976 up to present

The President (Chủ tịch nước) is elected by National Assembly for a five-year term and acts as the commander-in-chief of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces and Chairman of the Council for Defense and Security. Moreover, the president has the right to decide on executive brands. The government (Chính phủ), the main executive state power of Vietnam, is headed by the Prime Minister, who has several Deputy Prime Ministers and several ministers in charge of particular activities. The executive branch is responsible for the implementation of political, economic, cultural, social, national defense, security and external activities of the state. The National Assembly is a unicameral legislative body. The National Assembly has 500 members, elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms. The legislature is, according to the constitution, the highest organ of the state. Its powers includes the enactment and amendment of the constitution and laws; the adoption of the government budget; supervising the Government of Vietnam and other holders of public powers responsible to the National Assembly; and appointing members of the judiciary. The Vietnamese constitution and legislation provide for regular elections for the office of the President of the Socialist Republic, the National Assembly and the People's Councils.

Vietnam has a judicial system governed by the Constitution of Vietnam and national legislation enacted by National Assembly. The Supreme People's Court (Tòa án Nhân dân Tối cao) is the highest court of appeal in Vietnam. There are other specialized courts in Vietnam, including the Central Military Court, the Criminal Court, the Civil Court and the Appeal Court. The Supreme People's Procuracy observes the implementation of state organs and makes sure that Vietnamese citizens follow the law.

Socio-Political Mechanism of Vietnam

Source:http://suthatamiangtrang.vn/en/socio-political-mechanism-vietnam.html/

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Vietnam

             

             

Disclaimer: The author does not claim the OWNERSHIP of any of the information above.

LANGUAGE

Ancient Vietnamese script

Source: alotrip.com

Linguistic Classification

        Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago as part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). 

     Later, Muong was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages, and a Viet–Muong subgrouping was established, also including  Thavung , Chut, Cuoi,  etc.  The term "Vietic" was proposed by Hayes (1992), who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Muong. The term " Vietic"  is used, among others, by Gerard Diffloth, with a slightly different proposal on subclassification, within which the term "Viet–Muong" refers to a lower subgrouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, Muong dialects, and Nguon (of Quang Binh Province). 

As a National Language

Percentage of Vietnamese people, by province

  <20%

  20%–40%

  40%–60%

  60%–80%

  80%–95%

  >95%

Source: wikipedia.org

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt) is an Astroasiastic language that originated in Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a first or second language for the many ethnic minorities of Vietnam . As a result of Vietnamese emigration and cultural influence, Vietnamese speakers are found throughout the world, notably in East and Southeast Asia, North America, Australia and Western Europe. 

In addition to this, it is the Austroasiatic language with by far the most speakers, several times as many as the rest of the family combined. Its vocabulary has borrowings from Chinese, and it formerly used a modified set of Chinese characters called Chữ Nom given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese alphabet (chữ quốc ngữ) in use today is a Latin alphabet with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.

In the Czech Republic, Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have resided in the country either traditionally or on a long-term basis. This status grants Czech citizens from the Vietnamese community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities and at courts anywhere in the country. Moreover, it also grants the use of Vietnamese in public signage, election information, cultural institutions, and access to legal information and assistance in municipalities where at least 10% of the population is of the minority group.

As a Foreign Language

Global Distribution of Vietnamese speakers

Source: https://www.alotrip.com

Vietnamese is increasingly being taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam. In countries with strongly established Vietnamese-speaking communities such as Australia, Canada, France, and the United States, Vietnamese language education largely serves as a cultural role to link descendants of Vietnamese immigrants to their ancestral culture. Meanwhile, in countries near Vietnam such as Cambodia, Laos, South Korea, and Thailand, the increased role of Vietnamese in foreign language education is largely due to the growth and influence of Vietnam's economy. 

Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools (trường Việt ngữ) have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around the world, notably in the United States. 

Historic and stronger trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam and a growing interest among the French Vietnamese population (one of France's most established non-European ethnic groups) of their ancestral culture have also led to an increasing number of institutions in France, including universities, to offer formal courses in the language. 

Since the late 1980s, the Vietnamese German community has enlisted the support of city governments to bring Vietnamese into high school curricula for the purpose of teaching and reminding Vietnamese German students of their mother-tongue. Furthermore, there has also been a number of Germans studying Vietnamese due to increased economic investment in Vietnam. 

Vietnamese is taught in schools in the form of dual immersion to a varying degree in Cambodia, Laos, and the United States. Classes teach students subjects in Vietnamese and another language. Furthermore, in Thailand, Vietnamese is one of the most popular foreign languages in schools and colleges.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language

Disclaimer: The author does not claim the OWNERSHIP of any of the information above.

LITERARY PERIODS

      1.  FOLK LITERATURE

Early oral Vietnamese literature, “Truyen”, are still accessible nowadays as compared to their written literature. Their oral poetry tradition is purely native. These originated from agrarian prayers common to the prehistory of the Mon-Khmer language family. 

Ca dao, is a Sino-Vietnamese term, which is a form of their folk poetry that can be sung like other poems, and can be used to create folk songs. People used to call it “Phong dao” because the ca dao reflects the customs of each locality and era. It is also a romantic writing that serves as a standard for romantic poetry which covers different types of love, and can be used to express people’s intellectual struggle in the society or in meeting with nature. This may consist four-syllable lines, five-syllable lines, six-eight or two seven six eight, can be sung wholecloth, without the need to insert fillers like when people ngam the typical poetry.

Most of their myths consist of stories on creator gods, supernatural beings, heroes, and viewpoints of their ancestors about human life. Most of these consists stories on creation, origins (Lạc Long Quân, Âu Cơ), and culture heroes (Sơn Tinh or Mountain Spirit - Thủy Tinh or Water Spirit).

This literary period is a combination of many different forms. Aside from oral tradition, other media that are being utilized / variegated are hidden (only retained in the memory of folk authors), fixed (written), and shown (performed).

2.  MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Han (Chinese-Vietnamese Literature)

These are works written in chữ Hán ("Classical Chinese writing") or chữ nho ("Confucian writing"), which are considered as the earliest Vietnamese surviving literature. Most of their official documents, like official proclamations by Vietnamese kings, royal histories, and declarations of independence from China and poems are written using these Classical Writings. Aside from the fact that these Chinese scripts are foreign to modern Vietnamese speakers, these are also mostly incomprehensible even when directly translated from Chinese into the modern quốc ngữ script due to their Chinese syntax and vocabulary. Colloquial Vietnamese translation is needed for these to be understood by the general public. 

The poets, Nguyen Thuyen and Nguyen Si Co were the first to write in the classical Han Chinese. At the turn of the century King Ho Quy Ly (1400-1407) himself translated the Confucian classic Kinh Thi into nom. Thereafter an increasingly large number of other works were composed in the new script.

The oldest extant literature written in classical Han Chinese comprises a corpus of 11th century poems written by Buddhist monks. By the 13th and 14th centuries poems in classical Han Chinese were written for the court by Confucian scholars such as Le Quat , Mac Dinh Chi ( 1346), Truong Han Sieu ( 1354), Chu Van An ( 1370) and Nguyen Trung Ngan (1289-1370), along with important historical works such as Le Van Huu’s Dai Viet Su Ky (‘Brief History of Dai Viet’) and a range of geographical and encyclopaedic volumes.

Some notable works under this includes:Thiên đô chiếu (遷都詔) 1010, Edict on transfer the capital of Đại Cồ Việt from Hoa Lư (modern Ninh Bình) to Đại La (modern Hanoi) ; Nam quốc sơn hà (南國山河) 1077, Mountains and rivers of the Southern country, poem by General Lý Thường Kiệt ; Dụ chư tì tướng hịch văn 諭諸裨將檄文, Proclamation to the Officers, General Trần Hưng Đạo, 1284 ; Truyền kỳ mạn lục (傳奇漫錄, Collection of Strange Tales, partly by Nguyễn Dữ, 16th century ; and, Hoàng Lê nhất thống chí (皇黎一統志) Unification Records of the Le Emperor, historical novel ending with Gia Long. anon.

 

Nom (Southern Writing)

        During 13^th Century onwards, works written in chữ nôm (a locally inveted script based on Chinese characters) was developed for writing spoken Vietnamese language. These texts can be directly translated into the modern quốc ngữ script and be readily understood by modern Vietnamese speakers. This has never been standardized and as a result, different translations came up due to ambiguities as to which words are meant when a writer used certain characters.

The era of the Le kings (14th and early 15th centuries) was a significant period of development for classical Han Chinese literature. Of particular note were the works of Nguyen Trai, scholar and strategist to Le Loi (later King Le Thai To, 1428-1433) during the resistance war against the invading Ming Chinese. Trai, whose “Proclamation of Victory over the Ngo” remains one of the finest works of Vietnamese national literature, left an important collection of 254 poems written in classical Han Chinese known as Quoc Am Thi Tap. Though classical Han Chinese was the official the language of the Vietnamese royal court, two Le monarchs – Le Thai Tong (1434-1442) and Le Thanh Tong (1460-1497) – are remembered for their poems written in nom; some 300 works of great historical and literary significance written by Le Thanh Tong may be found in the anthology “Collected Poems of the Hong Duc Period”. However, nom poetry did not really begin to break free from Chinese influence until the 16th century, a process signaled by the appearance of 100 remarkable works in nom by Confucian scholar Nguyen Binh Khiem (1491-1585), brought together as the “Compilation of B?ch Van’s Poems”. 

Some highly regarded works written in this style includes: Nguyễn Du's Truyện Kiều, Đoàn Thị Điểm's chữ nôm translation of the poem Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc (征婦吟曲 - Lament of a Warrior Wife) from the Classical Chinese poem composed by her friend Đặng Trần Côn (famous in its own right), and poems by the renowned poet Hồ Xuân Hương.

3.  MODERN LITERATURE 

The popularisation of Romanised script, Quoc Ngu, allowed the break free from the restrictions of Classical Chinese Literature during the French colonial period. This has been originally developed by French Jesuit missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes, as a way of spreading Roman Catholicism. Through the “Renovation” movement of 1907, its potential value as a medium of disseminating patriotic and anti-colonial ideas. Production of books, newspapers and magazines written in Romanised script as literacy gradually spread in Vietnam began the success of journalism and literature all over the country.

        The first real flowering of modern Vietnamese literature took place in the north under the influence of the romantic styles, themes and techniques of French literature. Ha Noi journalist, Nguyen Van Vinh (1882-1936) pioneered the translation and publication of numerous foreign short stories and drama scripts in his newspaper Dang co tung bao. French Indochina also played as a catalyst for aspiring quoc ngu writers as a foundation in accepting it as a literary medium.

        “Women’s News”, Vietnam’s first influential women’s periodical also served as a momentous forum for growth in terms of content and form of modern literature. They also had their first home-grown novel, Hoang To “The Unjust Suffering of Hoang To Anh” by Tran Chanh Chieu, which is then followed by works of Ho Bieu Chanh, Hoang Ngoc Phach, Nguyen Trong Thuat, Nguyen Ba Hoc, and Pham Duy Ton. Literary historians and critics also emphasized the great contribution of Ha Noi-based “Self Reliance Literary Group” in the development of the truly satisfactory language for modern prose writing – capacity to handle vocabulary and syntactic styles.

In the field of poetry established names from the pre-war period such as Xuan Dieu, Huy Can, Che Lan Vinn, Te Hanh and Anh Tho repudiated their earlier work and turned their pens in support of the revolution. They were joined by many others, but then, several leading writers lost their life at the front during the final struggle with the French, including poets Hoang Loc (1920-1949) and Tham Tam (1917-1950) and novelists Tran Dang (1921-1949) and Nam Cao (1917-1951).

By the mid-20th century, all Vietnamese works of literature are written in chữ quốc ngữ, while works written in earlier scripts are transliterated into chữ quốc ngữ for accessibility to modern Vietnamese speakers. The use of the earlier scripts is now limited to historical references. Works in modern Vietnamese include: Việt Nam sử lược (越南史略) by Trần Trọng Kim 1921, and Số đỏ by Vũ Trọng Phụng 1936.

            Sources: https://www.britannica.com/art/Vietnamese-literature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_poetry#Ca_dao_(folk_poetry)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_literature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Chinese_in_Vietnam

https://vietlongtravel.com/news/vietnam-facts/vietnam-literature


Disclaimer: The author does not claim the OWNERSHIP of any of the information above.

VIETNAMESE LITERARY WORKS

A Classical epic poem with book cover in Chinese text, 
published 1967 Also known as Truyện Kiều.

 THE TALE OF KIEU 

by Nguyen Du

Vương Thúy Kiều— a beautiful and educated girl — is visiting her ancestors' graves with her younger sister Thuý Vân and brother Vương Quan. On the way she met a grave of a dead performer—Đạm Tiên, who was said to be as beautiful and talented as she is but lived a life full of grief. There, she also met and promised to marry Kim Trọng, a young and talented scholar, but their marriage is delayed because he has to go back home to mourn a relative for half a year.

During that time misfortune started to happen to Kiều. Her family is framed by a silk dealer, all their wealth has been taken away by the government, and her father and brother are facing imprisonment. Kiều decides to sell herself to Scholar Mã to free her family, therefore showing her deeply rooted love for her family, while not forgetting the promise with Kim Trọng and has it resolved by asking her sister, Thúy Vân, to fulfill it. Scholar Mã turns out to be a person who is in charge of finding girls for a brothel run by Madam Tú. He rapes Kiều and takes her back to the brothel, but she refuses to serve any guest and threatens to commit suicide if she is forced to do so. Madam Tú devised a plan to crush Kiều's dignity by hiring Sở Khanh, a playboy and con artist, to meet Kiều and coerce her into eloping with him, and then lead her into Tú's trap. With nothing left to hold on to, Kiều finally submits and becomes a prostitute.

Kiều's beauty attracts many men, including Student Thúc, who uses his wealth to buy Kiều out of the brothel and marry her, although he already has a wife named Lady Hoạn, who is the daughter of prime minister Hoạn. Upon knowing this, Hoạn burns with jealousy and secretly tells her henchmen to kidnap and force Kiều to become a slave in her house when Thúc is on the way to visit her. Thúc is shocked at the sight of Kiều as a slave, but never dares to reach out to her in front of his first wife.

Kiều runs away from the estate, stealing two candlesticks in the process. She goes to a Buddhist temple, where nun Giác Duyên graciously accepts her. However, after realizing that Kiều is carrying stolen property, she is thrown out and again gets tricked into another brothel, Madam Bạc's, where she meets Từ Hải, leader of a revolution army. Từ Hải and Kiều get married and live together for five years, together reigning over a temporary kingdom.

Later, she has been tricked by Hồ Tôn Hiến, Kiều convinces her husband to surrender all in favor of amnesty. This eventually leads to the invasion of Từ Hải's kingdom, and the death of Từ Hải himself. Mesmerized by Kiều's beauty, Hồ Tôn Hiến forces her to perform in his victory banquet, where he rapes her. To avoid bad rumors, he hurriedly marries Kiều off to a local official. Feeling devastated, she throws herself into the Tiền Đường river. Once again, Giác Duyên saves her, as she prophesied about Kiều's fate long ago. Meanwhile, Kim Trọng, Kiều's first love, becomes an official and is providing housing for Kiều's parents. He has been searching for Kiều, and eventually finds her with the Buddhist nun Giác Duyên. Kiều is reunited with her first love and her family, thus ending her cycle of bad karma. She is married to Kim Trọng, but refuses to have a physical relationship with him because she thinks she is no longer worthy.

Source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Kieu?fbclid=IwAR1mCBFX-4Q3wlkV2HHj8pbsQ6k3u8wXt5YDykhtxGXcdWuLh7RnYkZMD1g

 ====================================================

THE SORROW OF WAR

Published in 1990 with original title, 

Thân phận của tình yêu (Identity of love).

by Bao Ninh

Kien has become Missing-In-Action in the fallout of the Vietnam War. He is tasked with the clean up and treatment of the bodies and remains of bodies in the Jungle of Screaming Souls. In the aftermath of the recently ended war, Kien and his friends attempt to forget the horrors and atrocities they have witnessed, all while literally burying the dead.

But Kien is not actually still in 1975. Rather, he has returned to his nearly apocalyptic experiences of trauma for the specific purpose of finishing his novel. It has been forty years since the war ended, but Kien can re-experience it all as if he were still there. Kien remembers the devastation the war brought to his community. His father abandoned hope, burned his paintings and died. Phuong sacrificed herself for Kien's life after Hoa raped her. He remembers the hosts of soldiers in the bars following the war, drinking to erase the traumatic memories, taking prostitutes in Hanoi.

Kien explains that he's not sharing all this for nothing; he's trying to capture the horror of war, because he feels the reader will likely not understand how terrifying it really was. He shares battle stories and writes about the deaths of his loved ones and comrades.

After a considerable exposition from Kien, Bao Ninh introduces himself to the reader (in the book, of course). Bao explains that he has been working with Kien to finish the novel, and although Kien has departed from this life, Bao explains that Kien's decision to finally look into his own traumatized past yielded a reward for Kien in these final days of his life: he remembered the way things used to feel when they were all naive and innocent, before the war.

 Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_of_War

https://www.gradesaver.com/the-sorrow-of-war/study-guide/summary

====================================================

The first novel by Vietnamese-American about

 the Vietnam war and its result, published in 1997.

MONKEY BRIDGE

by Lan Cao

Monkey Bridge traverses several opposing worlds. The novel consists of two narrators: Mai, a teenage Vietnamese immigrant, who flees to the United States on the day Saigon falls in 1975, and her mother, Thanh, who manages to join Mai a few months after Mai is settled in the U.S.

Three years after their arrival in the United States, Thanh is in the hospital with a blood clot in her brain, suffering paralysis of half side. She has been calling out for Baba Quan, her father, in her sleep. Thanh and Baba Quan were supposed to meet in Saigon and leave for America together back in 1975, but this plan fails because Baba Quan, for some unknown reason, did not show up. Since then, Thanh has "never truly recovered from the misfortune that left him without the means to leave Saigon".

Mai, who worries about her mother's health and understands how desperately her mother wants to see Baba Quan, decides to make a dangerous trip to Canada with her best friend Bobbie, where they plan to make a phone call to Baba Quan once they cross the border and hopefully take a wild chance to bring her grandfather to the United States. The plan, however, did not succeed. Mai retreats at the last minute because she not only fears of being deported by the U.S government but also recalls what her father says all the time: "One wrong move ... the entire course of a country changed", in which he refers to America's decision to make the crucial commitment in the Vietnam War.

Thanh is discharged by the hospital and decides to temporarily leave her Vietnam past behind so she can move on. She becomes socially active again in the Vietnamese American community, Little Saigon. Meanwhile, Mai, idling around at home in the summer before attending college, gets very curious about her mysterious grandfather and starts to pry into things about Baba Quan from her mother and different acquaintances, such as Mrs. Bay, Thanh's best friend, and Uncle Michael, a Vietnam veteran who befriended her father and brought her to the United States when Saigon fell. After several attempts, Mai still fails to learn anything specific about Baba Quan; all they would tell her are some basic facts and superficial comments. She also fails to convince Uncle Michael to help her grandfather relocate in the United States.

Wanting to know more about her mother's and Baba Quan's Vietnam past—"the vivid details that accompanied every fault and fracture, every movement and shift that had forced her apart and at the same time kept her stitched together", Mai sneaks in her mother's room and steals the letters that her mother has kept writing her, but has not let her read them yet. From her mother's secret letters, Mai finally learns the unspoken family history that Thanh has been avoiding telling her and the reason why Baba Quan did not show up at their escape.

Unable to maintain his rental payments, Baba Quan, whom Thanh once believed to be her father, prostitutes his wife to his rich landlord, Uncle Khan, whose wife is sterile. Tuyet, Baba Quan's wife, later on has Khan's child, Thanh. From this act, Baba Quan secures his land and gets endless benefits from the rich landlord. The Khan's soon adopt Thanh and send her to a Catholic boarding school. Living with shame and rage, Baba Quan has been planning to get revenge on his landlord by committing murder but never succeeds. Later on when the war begins, Baba Quan becomes a Vietcong. His village is declared a free-fire zone, and his family is moved away from their ancestral land to a nearby strategic hamlet, while he stays there to keep working with the Vietcong. Thanh's mother dies during the transition. In accordance with Vietnamese ritual, Thanh has to escort her mother's body back to their home village for burial. By a riverbank on her way back home, Thanh witnesses Baba Quan murder his landlord. Struck with panic, Thanh runs away and leaves her mother's body behind. Because Thanh loses her mother's body and fails to perform the proper burial rituals, she is left with a permanent scar and never adjusts to her new life in America.

Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Bridge?fbclid=IwAR0_iT4Jg_aOcez1QdZmr3LR9SUqgUQH0VCqwdar6HvyUZpzsJDwnMUhKFU

Disclaimer: The author does not claim the OWNERSHIP of any of the information above.

MAJOR VIETNAMESE WRITERS

Poet, Nguyen Du(1765-1820) 

source: Wikipedia

Nguyễn Du

        He is a 16^th Century Chinese-language, chữ nôm (the ancient writing script of Vietnam), Vietnamese poet who is most known for writing the epic poem, The Tale of Kiều.

He was born in a great wealthy family in 1765 in Bích Câu, Thăng Long. He was the seventh child of Nguyễn Nghiễm, a former prime minister under the Lê dynasty. By the age of 10, Nguyễn lost his father, and his mother at age 13, so for most of his teen years, he lived with his brother Nguyễn Khản or with his brother-in-law Đoàn Nguyễn Tuấn. 

At the age of 19 (some sources say 17), Nguyễn passed the provincial examination and received the title of "tú tài" (Bachelor's degree), which made him (very roughly) the equivalent of a high school graduate. However, in Nguyễn Du's time this was a far more difficult credential to get both because few people were wealthy enough to devote themselves to study and because of exacting standards applied. 

Nguyễn's mother was his father's third wife, noted for her ability at singing and composing poetry. In fact, she made her living by singing, which at that time was considered a disreputable occupation. It is said that Nguyễn may have inherited a part of his talents from his mother. He loved listening to traditional songs; and there was a rumor that, when he was 18, he himself eloped with a songstress.

After passing the provincial exam, he was appointed to the position of a military advisor in the Royal (Trịnh) army. After the Trịnh lords were defeated in 1786 by Nguyễn Huệ (the second youngest, most able and popular of the three Tây Sơn brothers), Nguyễn Du refused to serve in the Tây Sơn administration. He was arrested and held for some time before moving back to his native village in the north of the country. 

When Nguyễn Ánh defeated the Tây Sơn and took control over all of Vietnam in 1802, Nguyễn Du agreed to serve in his administration (many mandarins from the north refused to do this as it was widely felt that a mandarin should only serve one dynasty). At first he was given his old post of military advisor but after a decade he was promoted to ambassador to China (1813). While in China, he discovered and translated the Ming dynasty era tale that would become the basis for the Tale of Kieu. He was later appointed to two more diplomatic missions to Peking, but before he could depart for the last one, he died of a long illness for which he refused treatment.

Nguyễn's father had been a minister under the Lê dynasty, and his family had benefited greatly under their rule. For most of his life, Nguyễn Du was haunted by what he felt was his own betrayal of the rightful rulers of Vietnam, which occurred when he accepted a post under the Nguyễns.

OTHER WORKS

·       Bắc Hành Tạp Lục (Travels to the North, 北行雜錄)

·       Điêu la thành ca giả (吊羅城歌者)

·       Long thành cầm giả ca (龍城琴者歌)

·       Nam Trung Tạp Ngâm (Various Poems)

· Mộng đắc thái liên (夢得採蓮)

·       Ngẫu hứng V

·       Ngô gia Đệ cựu ca cơ (遇家弟舊歌姬)

·       Thác lời trai phường nón

·       Thanh Hiên thi tập (Poems of Thanh Hiên)

·       Văn chiêu hồn

·       Đọc (or Độc) Tiểu Thanh kí (Reading (or reader of) Tiểu Thanh's diary)

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyễn_Du

==============================================

Lan Cao

Vietnamese writer, Lan Cao

source: https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/lan-cao

Lan Cao (born 1961) is the author of the novels Monkey Bridge (1997) and The Lotus and the Storm (2014). She is also a professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law, specializing in international business and trade, international law, and development. She received her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. She has taught at Brooklyn Law School, Duke Law School, Michigan Law School and William & Mary Law School.

She was born in Saigon, South Vietnam and grew up in Saigon's twin city, Cholon. In 1975, when Communist forces defeated South Vietnam, she was flown out of Vietnam. She lived in Avon, Connecticut, with a close family friend, an American colonel, later promoted to Major General, and his wife. Cao received her B.A. in political science from Mount Holyoke College in 1983 and her J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school graduation, she worked as a litigation and corporate attorney at the NYC law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. She also clerked for a federal judge, Constance Baker Motley of the Southern District of New York, who was the first African-American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in Meredith v. Fair, where she won James Meredith's effort to be the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lan_Cao

==============================================

Bảo Ninh

Hoàng Ấu Phương a.k.a. "Bảo Ninh" 
source: listal.com

Hoàng Ấu Phương, also known by the pen name Bảo Ninh (born 18 October 1952 in Nghệ An), is a Vietnamese novelist, essayist and writer of short stories, best known for his first novel, published in English as The Sorrow of War.

Ninh narrated that American bombing raids during the Vietnam War, beginning in 1965 when he was 14, destroyed ordinary people's homes and upended their lives. As a result of the bombing his own school in Hanoi was relocated, which enthused him to anger rather than fear. He stated that Americans entering Vietnam were viewed as no different from earlier French colonizers, and that he inherited this view from his parents.

During the Vietam war, Ninh served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade, when he was 17 years old. He stated that the Vietnamese people who fought against the Americans were not specifically fighting for Marxism, but rather fighting to bring peace for their country. Hunger was a frequent problem for Ninh and his fellow soldiers, who often moved back and forth from their homes to the battlefields. Out of the five hundred who went to war with the brigade in 1969, Ninh is one of ten who survived. 

Ninh described the fear caused among Vietnamese soldiers by American airpower while in combat during the war: 

“While the bombs were falling, only a stone wouldn't be terrified. If the Americans noticed movement in the forest, they would eliminate the forest. Who knows how much money was spent? American taxpayers' money. If a cluster of napalm bombs were dropped, the jungle would turn into a sea of fire. Can you imagine a sea of fire?”      

                                                                               — Bảo Ninh

Ninh later  called the war "fratricide" fueled by American firepower.

"In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction."   — Bảo Ninh 

                                                                           

OTHER WORKS

·       The Sorrow of War - 1990

·       Hanoi At No Time - 2003

·       Rambling while stuck in traffic - 2005

·       Are old stories true? - 2009

·       Selected writings - 2011

·       Short story - 2013

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bảo_Ninh

Disclaimer: The author does not claim the OWNERSHIP of any of the information above.