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Janet Graham, University of Nebraska – Kearney, reviewed Hanoi at Night reviewer.
Episode 2791 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an interview with Janet Graham about her review of the book Hanoi at Midnight by Vietnamese writer Bảo Ninh. Graham will be interviewed by Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast.
Graham is a professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. In this interview she talks about the book titled Hanoi at Midnight by Vietnamese writer Bảo Ninh.
Bảo Ninh, a well-known Vietnamese writer, 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. Nearly twenty years ago, his novel The Sorrow of War, banned in Vietnam until 2006, became the first Vietnamese novel about the so-called American War to be translated into English. 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. The two stories previously published in English translation, “The Secret of the River” and “Untamed Winds,” were retranslated at the author’s request.
Some readers may find Bảo Ninh’s layered themes and fragmentary style as showcased in Hà Nội at MidnightOther Moons, mentioned above. He and writers of his generation focus on “how people lived and suffered during and after the war,” arguing that they “write to express their love for peace.”
Quoting him in the foreword to Hà Nội at Midnight, Nguyễn Văn Thuấn of Huế University claims that Bảo Ninh successfully advocates for peace when he writes about war, and adds that Bảo Ninh combines poetic and meticulous description to depict “daily life in contemporary Việt Nam, unfulfilled promises, domestic conflicts, and romantic love.”
Listen to episode 2791 and discover more about Janet Graham and her review of the book Hanoi at Midnight.
