Story not to be told
Hanoi's decision to ban a novel written by a former
prisoner has only fuelled interest in the book and
sparked a debate on its literary merits
HANOI - In probing a painful past, Vietnamese
author Bui Ngoc Tan believed he could coax his
readers to consider a more equitable future. But the title
of his autobiographical novel, which translates as Story
to Be Told in the Year 2000, proved to be wishful
thinking. This year, Tan won't be telling his story--at
least, not openly in Vietnam.
Tan's 900-page, two-volume novel, Chuyen ke Nam
2000, draws on the years he spent in prison between
1968 and 1973. He depicts his detention as arbitrary
and devastating for his whole family. "I was destroyed,
totally destroyed," says the book's narrator. Prison
injustice is hardly a new theme in world literature. But in
Vietnam's highly regulated publishing industry, Tan, 66,
breaks new ground with detailed descriptions of life in
communist North Vietnam's prisons and the tough times
after his release.
Dealing with such a sensitive subject drew a swift
clampdown, underscoring Hanoi's determination to
control the nation's historical legacy. The government
banned the book, published in February by
Hanoi-based Thanh Nien publishing house, and has
firmly rejected pleas to reconsider the decision. Year
2000 is the only book officially withdrawn this year.
"The ban on circulating the book is correct, and in
accordance with the publishing law," Phan Khac Hai,
vice-minister of culture and information, says.
Vietnamese law requires all texts to "contribute to the
cause of building and defending socialist Vietnam,"
while prohibiting prose guilty of "distorting history" or
"refuting revolutionary achievements." The point was
driven home on September 12, when the party's
general secretary, Le Kha Phieu, told a congress of
writers to create works that "leave undying imprints of
the nation's valiant struggle in the past and at present."
But the ban only sparked intense curiosity about Year
2000, leading to a whispered debate over its literary
merits. Some readers praised the novel, while many
were left unmoved. In Hanoi, the original edition can be
bought on the black market for 320,000 dong ($22),
while photocopies circulate among the intelligentsia and
other readers.
The book has also caught the attention of Overseas
Vietnamese. Four publishers have copied the
Vietnamese text off the Internet and produced versions
selling at $20 to $32 in Canada and the United States.
(So far, no published translations have emerged.) At the
Van Khoa bookstore in a California mall, owner Do
Dinh Tuan calls Year 2000 a "bestseller," having sold
100 copies in little more than a month, thanks to book
reviews and excerpts published in Overseas
Vietnamese publications. Buyers are mostly older
people, he reports, but some younger readers are also
snapping up the book.
That's what worries Hanoi. According to government
sources, it was feared the book would be used by
some hostile Overseas Vietnamese to rally against
alleged human-rights violations. But, as many readers
have noted, this is not the anguished scream of a
hardened dissident. Rather, the restrained narrative of
prisoner CR880 highlights how human kindness can
survive the grimmest circumstances: one minister even
helps the prisoner get back on his feet. "What I like
about his book is that he has no hatred, even though
he's bitter about how the government treated a
dedicated revolutionary," says Son Truong, who left
South Vietnam in 1976 and now lives in the U.S.
Betters days
Indeed, Tan wasn't always a pariah. At age 30, and
already an accomplished short-story writer, Tan won a
state writing competition. As a successful journalist, he
grew close to party leaders in the northern city of
Haiphong. In the book, Tan hints that his downfall was
linked to personal jealousies, and perhaps some failure
in following the party line on newspaper coverage. But
no charges were ever filed, and the mysterious arrest
haunts him. "How could I fight against the party?" the
prisoner in Year 2000 challenges an interrogator. "The
party handed me a pen to become a writer."
Tan, now a full-time writer, declined to be interviewed.
He has told friends that 60% of the novel is culled from
real life, with some characters composites of people he
encountered. Like many prison narratives elsewhere,
Tan tells of unrelenting hunger and the cruelty of prison
wardens. Once liberated, the narrator earns a pittance
by rolling cigarettes, selling shoes and hawking plastic
on the black market, while many people avoid him for
fear of the authorities.
"In my opinion, it's one of the most remarkable novels
in the past 30 or 40 years," says eminent Hanoi writer
and critic Duong Tuong. But not all agree. While
hesitating to comment publicly on a banned book, some
Vietnamese writers dismiss Tan's pared-down prose as
dull and his travails as little short of mundane. Recalling
the hunger, poverty and mourning of those wartime
years, they also remember the necessity of surmounting
individual pain to achieve national victory. "He
exaggerated his personal tragedy," scoffs one influential
writer in his 40s. "Bui Ngoc Tan's loss is nothing
compared to the losses experienced by others."
Moreover, some younger writers say they find his tale
irrelevant to their current woes in coping with a rapidly
changing society. "His sorrow is not my sorrow," says a
novelist in his 30s. The controversy comes as
Vietnamese writers are enjoying increasing freedom to
meet foreigners and travel abroad. Tan himself remains
free to write in Haiphong, and his attendance at an
official writers' congress in April was seen as a minor
triumph. Some writers are convinced that had Year
2000 appeared in the mid-1980s, Tan would have
been marched right back to prison. As for the Thanh
Nien editors, they were subject to party criticism but
not fired.
The state issues broad publishing guidelines but doesn't
censor manuscripts in advance. Publishers are held
personally responsible if anything sparks the ire of the
ideologues. In exploiting these loopholes, some
novelists have had better luck than Tan. Consider the
case of Ma Van Khang, a heavyweight in the Vietnam
Writers' Association and editor-in-chief of the Labour
Publishing House. Last year he came out with Against
the Flood, a novel about the frustrations of an eminent
writer and editor whose novel is suppressed by
scheming associates in his state-owned publishing
house. Khang's narrator rails against wannabe party
cadres who only seek promotion, and "self-important,
self-serving babblings of meetings and seminars." Yet
the novel won kudos at home, and an English
translation will be issued in October in the U.S.
Still, other writers' manuscripts are languishing. "I think
there are many books that are not suitable to publish
right now, but maybe it will be better to publish them in
the future," a Thanh Nien editor says. In the meantime,
watch out for more samizdat.
By Margot Cohen and Murray Hiebert - Far Eastern Economic Review - September 28, 2000.
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