Hanoi at Midnight - (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network) by Bao Ninh

About the Book

The first English translation of several short stories by Bao Ninh, arguably the most famous writer in Vietnam.

Book Synopsis

Breaking a thirty-year silence, Bảo Ninh has permitted at last the publication of a new work in English. Ninh is perhaps Vietnam's foremost chronicler of the war, which he joined at age 17. Bringing to life the full range of his inventive and poetic language, Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran are granting to English readers Bảo Ninh's first book-length work since The Sorrow of War, which catapulted him to fame and which was banned in Vietnam until 2006. In Hà Nội at Midnight, ten stories are appearing in the West for the first time.

Juxtaposed with tranquility and geniality are abandoned landscapes and defoliated forests. Polluted rivers and streams, the war-torn sky, pungent air filled with the stench of decomposing human corpses, and the deafening roar of helicopters and bombers hovering in the gloom dominate the settings of Bảo Ninh's stories.

Intertwined with these horrific images are human tears shed during farewell ceremonies, when recruits are separated from their loved ones, when parents live in anxiety and hope while their children are fighting in remote regions, and when soldiers bury their comrades and burden themselves with the fallen's unfulfilled wishes. Hà Nội at Midnight delineates the complex outpourings of war and the way it remakes human relationships.

Review Quotes

"Bảo Ninh . . . makes a long-awaited reappearance in English
translation in this new short-story collection, speaking to literature's power
to unite people, both in the collaboration necessary for translating and
publishing it, and in its ability to speak directly to the ephemeral beauty and
terror of the human experience. Dedicated to his comrades, Hà Nội at
Midnight represents twelve of Bảo Ninh's most highly regarded stories,
published in Vietnam between 1987 and 2013, ten of which have never appeared in
English. Taken as a whole, these stories show the different ways that war
alters people but also poignantly communicates that life continues, in all its
complexity, in the midst of war." --Janet Graham, University
of Nebraska at Kearney, World Literature Today, March 2024

"In this 2023 collection, the twelve stories Bao Ninh selects (most
newly published in English with two stories re-translated at his request) evoke
both deep sorrow and timeless longing. . . . [The] graceful
translation brings alive these universal stories that probe the deep sorrow of
war and its aftermath, even as they touch our hearts with longing and hope. . . .
Ha Noi at Midnight is a collection of powerful stories that seeks to
take a stand against war by writing about peace--about reconciliation and the
human journey toward redemption. Read [this book]. In the face of unending sorrow, these stories
retain the power to work miracles." --Thomas G. Bowie Jr., War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities
35 (2023)