If you watched Burns and Novick's 10-part Vietnam documentary, then you'll remember the face, voice, and stories of former North Vietnamese soldier Bao Ninh. I took his 1994 book "The Sorrow War" on my recent trip to the Q and began its 233 pages.

I could read it only in small doses before looking up to take in pristine beauty around me and recover, if but a bit. I can't believe I'm reading such a devastating and heart-wrenching book in a place of such beauty, I told a canoeing partner. Answered he: perhaps a place like this is the only place one COULD read it.

Powerful, powerful. One begins post-war, in the Central Highlands, with a soldier assigned to scour the countryside on a remains-gathering team, struggling to sleep in the back of a truck on a hammock stretched over the bodies collected in the Jungle of the Screaming Souls.

from various reviewers:

--"the first novel from Vietnam to question Hanoi's victory" ...
"the censors were evidently moved by the book's unflinching sincerity and Ninh's literary gifts" ... and "will force American readers to acknowledge how little they still understand of the long war that left such a legacy of grief and guilt in their own country."

I feel like my soul and psyche are at once both damaged and stronger for having read it. Anyone else familiar?

-- kypaddler