“Sir, sir, you want postcards? Souvenirs? Look, here, The Sorrow of War, a very good book. It is illegal here, sir. But I have it. Very good book.”
Every sidewalk salesman in Hanoi had a copy. The cheap paper and poor gluing verified that the copies weren’t being distributed by a major publisher, but most were poorly translated versions of the edited edition.
Hanoi had a problem with the book. The Sorrow of War is fairly typical as war literature goes: stock characters, moral quandaries, lack of clarity regarding right and wrong, etc. It wouldn’t have been a problem if it had merely presented Americans as bad guys. The radical thing was that it portrayed Vietnamese soldiers as fallible, brutal, and cowardly as well. There are no wonderfully honorable characters in the book.
The book lives up to its title. Whether examined for its depiction of soldiers, politics, coming of age, or romance, it’s a sad book.
I’d recommend it for those interested in southeast Asian authors, but it probably won’t change your life otherwise.
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