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3 books match the query 'Chung, Nguyen Ba'

cover of A Time Far Past: A Novel of Viet Nam

A Time Far Past

A Novel of Viet Nam

Le Luu

University of Massachusetts Press, 1997

This epic novel presents a sweeping portrait of war and peace in northern Vietnam from the defeat of the French to the mid-1980s. The story follows the odyssey of Giang Minh Sai, the son of a Confucian scholar in the rural Red River delta, from his early childhood through his decorated service during the American War and his later efforts to adapt to the postwar world of urban Ha Noi. Through two failed marriages, Giang Minh Sai struggles to come to terms with his responsibilities, his past, and his future. The novel's ending leaves its hero and Vietnamese socialism at a problematic and painful crossroads.

In its intricate sketching of complicated alliances, personal debts, and human interactions, A Time Far Past explores the complex layering of family and village history and Party and feudal authority. It also paints a vivid picture of the vast dislocations in Vietnamese culture caused by the political and military turmoil of the Indochina wars.

A Time Far Past was enormously popular in Vietnam, where it was first published in 1986, selling more than 120,000 copies and winning that country's national prize for fiction.
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cover of Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993

Mountain River

Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993

Kevin Bowen

University of Massachusetts Press, 1998

This landmark bilingual collection presents a comprehensive selection of Vietnamese poetry spanning nearly fifty years of warfare and its aftermath, from the Indochinese War (1946-1954) through the Vietnam War (1961-1975) and into the post-war period. Edited and translated by renowned Vietnam War scholars and poets Kevin Bowen and Bruce Weigl, in collaboration with Vietnamese poet and editor Nguyen Ba Chung, this volume captures the voices of Vietnamese writers who experienced, witnessed, or processed the transformative conflicts that shaped modern Vietnam.

Encompassing poetry from multiple generations, these poems reflect on the diverse responses to conflict: some express patriotic commitment, others grapple with loss and trauma, while many explore the intimate human experiences of war. Mountain River demonstrates how Vietnamese poets drew upon a rich literary tradition while creating new forms of expression to address the unprecedented scale of modern warfare. The result is a collaborative effort that represents a significant achievement in postwar Vietnamese-American literary relations and cross-cultural translation.

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cover of Six Vietnamese Poets: Bilingual Edition

Six Vietnamese Poets

Bilingual Edition

Edited by Kevin Bowen and Nguyen Ba Chung

Northwestern University Press, 2001

Six Vietnamese Poets brings together for the first time the works of six writers, three women and three men, who came of age during the American War in Vietnam. In their verse, contemporary readers discover the richness and diversity of Vietnamese life and literature from a bold range of poetic styles, from free verse to romantic lyric to traditional classic Vietnamese forms. This bilingual edition features poets from North and South, men and women, combat soldiers and poet-soldiers writing of life in Vietnam through the turbulent final four decades of the twentieth century.

Speaking to the Heart

After a long night up writing poems,
a streak of sunlight leapt into my room.
I ran to the yard,
running as if I were a child,
footprints breaking the earth's first dew,
chest brushing softly the short grass.
Earth and sky seeped into me like wine.
Startled,
I saw my heart in the shape of a ploughshare<
resting on the earth's shoulder,
the heart thumping, steadily ploughing into time.

—Lam Thi My Da

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