Nguyễn Minh Châu (Quỳnh Lưu, 20 October 1930 – 23 January 1989) was a Vietnamese novelist. Châu is noted for in 1978, in the Military Culture journal having been one of the first to call for more humanity and realism, and less propaganda in depiction of Vietnam's struggle.[1]
Early life
editNguyễn Minh Châu was born in 1930, in Văn Thai, as known as Thơi village, Quỳnh Hải, Quỳnh Lưu Dist., Nghệ An Province. According to his wife, Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Doanh, Nguyễn Minh Châu's initial name was Nguyễn Thí. Not until he went to school that his parents changed his name to Minh Châu. In his last writing, "Ngồi buồn viết mà chơi" ("Sit down, write and play") which he wrote in his days at Military Hospital 108, Nguyễn Minh Châu said about himself: "Ever since I was small, I have always been a timid and very shy boy. I was afraid of everything, from mice to monsters. When I grew up after that, even when I was sixty years old, when in a crowd, I just want to hide in a corner and only so do I find safe and sound like a cricket that has gone down to its hole on the ground".
References
edit- ^ Andrew Hammond Cold War Literature: Writing The Global Conflict 2006 Page 127 "In November 1978, the literary journal V?n Ngh? Quan Dzi, printed an essay entitled Writing about the War. Its author, Nguyễn Minh Châu, an accomplished writer and military veteran, launched a fierce criticism of Vietnamese literature from the war. While he acknowledged that many works written during the conflict aimed to 'contribute to the war ...Nguyễn Minh Châu's criticism was ahead of its time; it took more than a decade for society to 'renovate' its attitudes towards the ..."