The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam

In the attic apartment where Kien’s father used to keep his paintings, an unnamed mute girl keeps Kien’s manuscript pages. Some nights Kien writes about her, from her point of view, as if she is looking at him. He describes how she sees him. Some night he visits her, and she understands, as he drunkenly tells her stories, that he is repeating whatever stories he just finished writing that night. Kien says she helped him remember, but does not say what he remembered. Nor does he know that she is in love with him. She knows he mistakes her for other girls: Hoa, from the jungle; Phuong, his first love; Hien, on the train; and the naked dead girl at the Saigon airport. When Kien finishes his novel, he says he doesn’t know what to do with the manuscript pages. He begins to burn them, but the mute girl stops him. She knows she won’t see him again, but she collects his manuscript pages and keeps them for him. 

One early morning, Kien thinks he dies a little death. He sees his life as a river, and this reminds him of a day with Phuong, just before the start of the war.