The Sorrow of War under fire in Vietnam.
Carl Robinson
Just a quick note for those following the latest cultural dust‑ups in Vietnam. Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War — published in 1991 and long treated as a kind of unofficial truth‑telling — is suddenly being denounced again. Conservative veterans, propaganda‑adjacent commentators, and the usual ultra‑nationalist Facebook pages are demanding the ministry revoke its recent honour as one of the “50 greatest works since reunification.” Even Fulbright University has been dragged in for once calling him “Vietnam’s most famous writer.”
The government is keeping its head down, as expected. The book, meanwhile, has gone through thirty printings and sold more than 60,000 copies. A new generation is reading it with fresh eyes — and some older gatekeepers clearly don’t like what they see.
For anyone outside Vietnam, it remains one of the few windows into how the war felt from the winning side. Still worth revisiting.
