The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh is alleged to be one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read and the biggest selling Vietnamese book in the country's history…although banned in the communist country for years - 8 out of 10

 

The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh is alleged to be one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read and the biggest selling Vietnamese book in the country's history…although banned in the communist country for years

8 out of 10

 

 

The Sorrow of War is remarkable in that it does overwhelm the readers with The Atrocities of Conflict, and, just like All Quiet On The Western Front https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/02/all-quiet-on-western-front-by-erich.html it makes clear that battles involve monstrosity, people vaporized, civilians abused, raped, tortured…

 

This narrative, which takes place in Vietnam, has also recalled A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-good-scent-from-strange-mountain.html by Robert Olen Butler, which has won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1993, a fabulous writer that has meant a lot to me, in the last years

I have made a video about A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain and found a comment from it from…Robert Olen Butler, and I thought this is just some stranger, impersonating the author, only there was a message on Facebook as well, and after a check, it proved this was the real Pulitzer Winner, and we are now friends on the social network

 

Kein is the main character of The Sorrow of War, he took part as a soldier -later promoted- in the Vietnam War, fighting on the (wrong, if you ask me) side of North Vietnam, the communists that is, against the Americans and we delve into the horror from the beginning, as we learn about the massive casualties, mass killings

The US troops bombed the enemy, they used immense quantities of napalm, and the descriptions are vivid, we get the feeling of that calamity, humans and animals were burnt, when they tried to escape from their hide outs, they would come straight into the line of fire, both the literal one and the machine guns

 

The corpses would litter the jungle – later, they would call it The Jungle of The Screaming Souls – and with the raining season, there would be swamps and corpses would disintegrate into them, with the dry season, the stench, the horror is again so well painted that you can almost see the rust color and all the rest…

One commanding officer insists that they never surrender – they also have political indoctrination, and by the way, the book was banned in what is still a communist country, and they took Kien back, because they said they need some of the ‘good seeds, for the future harvest’, this is what they do with the crops, in agriculture

We are told that, even when there is a severe shortage, they have to keep good seeds, set aside, because otherwise there is no future for food supplies, and I can imagine the propaganda, the stupid awful things they were told, because we have had a commie regime here, and I fought against it, the link is at the end of this note

 

The village where they have had leprosy, or at least that was what the officers thought, and so they burnt the village, and then they also murdered a poor orangutan – I did not know they had them in Vietnam, I thought it is Indonesia only, anyway, the images are heart breaking and heinous, the animal appears to be alive, when they skin him

An article in The Economist describes what has happened in the war in Ukraine (well, many do that) and the infinite harm it did to most animals, dolphins have been killed in their thousands, by the Russian sonar used for their ships – God damn Putin, I hope he dies soon, and I was tempted to put in, let it be pain, but did not write it…oh, yes, I did

 

Some of the fauna has been luckier, and this is the case of the foxes in Ukraine, which doubled, or tripled their numbers, because hunting is not allowed, first, you could have the Russians dressed as hunters, sneaking in, then it does not do to have men fighting and others just enjoying nature, walking around with rifles

One of the flowers in the jungle, Rosa canina, is called a ‘diabolical flower’, it was so powerful that one of the commanders ordered his men to eliminate it, take out the roots and all, because it was arousing, inflammatory, and they also used it as a sort of marijuana – I hope some day to smoke weed, I have not reached that point…yet

 

Another horror that is there, in print, regards the three teenagers that have been abused, among so many others – as Kien and his comrades are in the jungle, there are movements at night, and the protagonist is not sure if these are visions, or what, in the exhaustion of war, moving, enduring the hardship, maybe he sees things

He realizes that they are real, and he can see what was the explanation, there has been a farm there, and the sisters must have returned to the abandoned property, and now, with these young soldiers near, they have formed a bond…the soldiers are mostly teenagers, Kien and another, with a little over twenty are veterans

 

However, when he is moving on to verify the farm, there is no sound, and only after some search, he finds a bra, with blood on it and slowly, we get the picture, the teenagers have been abducted by an American commando, they came to the farm, found the girls, took them, and later we see that they have been abused.

The Americans are caught in their turn, and Kien lines them up, makes them dig their own graves, and asks about what happened, and he is told the truth, or most of it, a heinous act, for which the killers will pay, promptly, albeit one of them begs to be saved, in desperation, insisting that he did not participate in the murder…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”