Introducing Bestseller Concept in Vietnam

By Sa Eun-young

Staff Reporter

To become a best-selling writer at the age of 31 is a feat many authors would envy. Vietnamese writer Nguyen Ngoc Tu, 31, who has taken readers by storm, not only sold some 80,000 copies of her latest novel, but she also introduced the ``bestseller'' concept in her country.

The novel, ``The Endless Fields,'' which received Vietnam's most prestigious literary prize, the Vietnam Writers' Association award for fiction in 2006 has been translated and published in Korea. (Translated by Ha Jae-hong; Asia Publishers; 168 pp., 9,000 won). In the book, she steps away from Vietnam's routine subject of war, and touches on the life of people living in the poverty-stricken countryside of Vietnam.

``Although the wounds of war remain, I wanted to move on and write about a new subject. Still, although war may not appear directly, its presence is no doubt felt throughout this story as well,'' Nguyen told reporters at a restaurant in central Seoul last Tuesday. She visited together with Vietnam's veteran poets Chim Trang and Thu Nguyet, and artist Tran Luan Tin, who drew the illustrations for the book.

Upon its release in Vietnam, the novel sold like hot cakes. But it drew mixed reactions and heated debate with some saying that it was interesting, while others said it was too provocative. This was something that the author had not expected.

``I didn't worry about how it would be read, but just poured my feelings out into my writing," Nguyen said. She wrote thinking upon the idea of resentment and forgiveness.

The novel is a Bildungsroman of an 18-year-old girl who learns lessons on life through witnessing or experiencing them first-hand _ including poverty, family break-up, violence and rape.

The girl's life is uprooted after her mother leaves home, an incident that leaves an indelible scar on both her and her brother, but especially her father. This causes the family to wander endlessly throughout the region. Along their journey, their paths cross with a prostitute who goes all-out to help the family but gets wounded by the father's attitude towards her. When she decides to leave, she has the lovesick younger brother chasing after her. At the end, the main character herself is in a helpless situation with her father equally powerless to help her.