Hanoi at Midnight: Stories (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network Series)

Hanoi at Midnight: Stories (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network Series)

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. "The twelve stories in Hà Nôi at Midnight are deeply personal, exploring ways in which war can shift relationships, to each other and to ourselves. 'The Secret of the River' tells the heartbreaking story of how floodwaters dismantled a family; 'Beloved Son' is about a mother writing to a son who will not return home; in 'An Unnamed Star,' a railroad signalman with dementia waits for a train that won’t come. Each story, shifting through time and tense, brings readers into a new and unforgettable lived experience." —Michelle Kicherer, Willamette Week  (Portland, OR) " Hà Nội at Midnight is a reflective examination of the war and its impact on those it ensnared. Containing ten stories written over the past forty years, the book explores a Vietnam environmentally, materially and psychologically decimated by conflict and its wake. The implied question throughout: How does one go on after enduring the horrendous? It’s a matter that extends beyond war, and that can be appreciated by anyone who has suffered trauma or profound loss."  " Hà Nội at Midnight  is a collection of short stories by the acclaimed Vietnamese writer, Bảo Ninh. Ten of the twelve stories in this outstanding new collection are published in English for the first time. They were written over a 25-year period and serve to humanize the people on all sides of the war." —Bill McCloud, The VVA Veteran is a gut-wrenching but valuable read, focusing on universal experiences of war.” —Kate Padilla, Authorlink “[In Hà Nội at Midnight ] deeply felt stories illuminate the interior landscape of a postwar country and the emotionally damaged lives of its soldiers and civilians.” —Alan Chong Lau, International Examiner “Several stories in the collection lyrically yet unflinchingly revisit the anti-heroic themes explored in  The Sorrow of War , such as loss of innocence, survivor’s guilt, and postwar trauma, while others reflect Bảo Ninh’s keen observation of civilian life that encapsulates both the stoic gentility of Hanoi during the war years and its striving postwar atmosphere.” —Thuy Dinh, Asymptote “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) “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 Bảo Ninh , Vietnam’s most internationally renowned w