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Bao Ninh. The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam. Frank Palmos, ed. Phan Thanh Hao, tr. New York/London. Pantheon/Minerva. 1995. 233/217 pages. $21/L5.99. ISBN 0-679-43961-7 / 0-7493-9711-X
--. Le chagrin de la guerre. Phan Huy Duong, tr. Arles, Fr. Philippe Picquier. 1994. 255 pages. 130 F. ISBN 287730-199-0.
Bao Ninh's fabulous novel The Sorrow of War, which served as its young author's graduation project at Nguyen Du Writing School in Hanoi, has already been translated into many languages, including German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, and Polish. In Great Britain, this best seller received The Independent's 1994 Foreign Fiction Award, and the 1991 original, titled Than phan cua tinh yeu (The Fate of Love), somehow evaded the censor's scissors and won the first prize in prose. The 1992 stateside reprint edition, renamed Noi buon chien-tranh (The Sorrow of War), has been most useful for comparison with the excellent French and English translations, of which the Picquier edition contains a foreword by Phan Huy Duong, now director of a publishing firm specializing in French editions of Vietnamese fiction. The English translator and editor, on the other hand, have taken certain liberties in an effort to produce a captivatingly readable story...