Hanoi at Midnight: Stories

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.