In The Sorrow of War, a writer named Kien struggles to process his traumatic experience in the Vietnam War. A former soldier for the North Vietnamese Army, he has trouble finding happiness in postwar Vietnam, even though he fought for the winning side. Kien’s life has been completely turned upside down by the war, and he finds himself unable to stop thinking about the horrible things he witnessed. Tormented by the violence of his past, he starts writing about his experiences, creating a nonlinear, fragmented narrative that begins right after the war ended in 1975.
In the months after the North’s victory, Kien was part of a Remains-Gathering Team searching for the many people who had gone missing in action. This required him to return to a place known as the Jungle of Screaming Souls, where he personally witnessed many horrific things over the 10 years he served as a soldier. While working with the Remains-Gathering Team, Kien often heard howls in the jungle at night. The noises caused him to remember an experience he had years before, when he and his men were stationed in the Jungle of Screaming Souls and he began to sense ghostly figures in their camp. As time went on, he slowly realized that the specters that came in and out of the camp weren’t ghosts, but three young women living on a farm nearby. Three of his soldiers had developed romantic relationships with these women, and though Kien knew he should put an end to their nightly meetings, he couldn’t bring himself to do it—he could never get in the way of love.
One day, the three soldiers were distraught because they couldn’t find the women from the farm. When Kien helped them look, they discovered that the three women had been taken by South Vietnamese soldiers. Kien and the others tracked these soldiers down, but they had already killed the women. Even though Kien didn’t know the women himself, he flew into a rage and ordered the soldiers to dig their own graves, preparing to shoot them when they finished. At the last minute, one of his own men suggested that he put off executing the enemy soldiers, at which point Kien turned on him and threatened to shoot him, too. In the end, though, he spared the South Vietnamese soldiers.
As part of the Remains-Gathering Team, Kien thought a lot about his time with the 27th Battalion. He was one of only 10 people in the battalion to survive a gruesome battle in 1969, and he’s haunted by the memory of his many friends and fellow soldiers who lost their lives. He himself almost died in that battle, but he managed to drag himself to a shoddy field hospital, where he spent the next several months on the verge of death. He thought the nurse tending to him was Phuong, the love of his life. He didn’t know it at the time, but he narrowly escaped death at this field hospital—a soldier who was with him told him years later that he and Kien were transferred to a bigger hospital just a few hours before the tents were bombed. The nurse who treated Kien had surely died.
Kien’s thoughts often drift back to Phuong, as he recalls their time together before and after the war. They were in love as teenagers, and Phuong even had a close relationship with Kien’s father—arguably closer than the bond Kien himself shared with his father. Both Phuong and Kien’s father saw themselves as free spirits who didn’t fit into the culture of wartime patriotism that defined North Vietnam in the 1960s. Kien’s father was a painter, but his artwork was somewhat highbrow, so most people shunned it at the time, since communist art was supposed to be accessible to everyone. Kien didn’t understand his father, even though he lived with him alone, since his mother had left years before (and died not long thereafter). His father spent hours painting in the attic of their apartment building. One day, though, he decided to kill himself, and he chose to burn all of his paintings beforehand. Phuong was there when he burned them, but she didn’t tell Kien about this until years later.
It was the night before Kien left for military training that Phuong told him about watching his father burn the paintings. She and Kien were lying on the banks of a lake in Hanoi after having skipped school, where they were supposed to be digging trenches with the rest of the students in preparation for the inevitable attacks on the city. Phuong wore a bathing suit underneath her clothes that day and convinced Kien to sneak away. They swam and then lay together on the banks late into the night. Phuong wanted to have sex, but Kien couldn’t bring himself to do it. Slightly frustrated, she criticized his devotion to his upcoming life as a soldier, trying to help him see that he might be gone for a very long time—if, that is, he came back at all. Still, though, he couldn’t bring himself to have sex with her, though they came close. He often thought about that night later in the war.
After leaving for training, Kien passed through Hanoi one last time on his way to the frontlines. His superior told him and the other soldiers they could visit their families before getting back on the train and going to the frontlines. If they were late to come back, though, the train would leave and they would be considered deserters, which was punishable by execution. Kien rushed back to his building but then learned from a neighbor that Phuong’s university was evacuating, so he rushed back to the train station, where he found her with another man. When Phuong saw Kien, she let the other man ride away on the train without her. She was overjoyed to see Kien; they rented a bicycle taxi and returned to their building. Just as they arrived, though, an air-raid siren started blaring, so their cab driver ran to the nearest shelter. Not wanting to waste their time together, they decided to commandeer the bicycle taxi, which they rode back to the station, laughing the whole way. They knew Kien was already in danger of missing his train, but they still had a good time.
Upon reaching the station, they saw that the train had already left, so Phuong convinced Kien that they should hitchhike to the next station, where he could reboard the train. But when they finally reached that station, there was only a cargo train travelling behind the train Kien actually needed. It was nighttime by then, so they snuck onto the cargo train in the dark, settling down in a pitch-black car full of other stowaways. They lay close to each other, feeling the thrill of being together in such extraordinary circumstances, though Kien still couldn’t bring himself to have sex with Phuong, which disappointed her. During the trip, however, more serious matters arose, as American bomber planes flew overhead and started targeting the railroads. The train Kien was supposed to be on was decimated by bombs, and even the cargo train sustain severe damage. In the chaos, Kien was separated from Phuong, at which point a group of men surrounded her and took turns raping her. It wasn’t until much later that Kien was able to find her again. She was battered and bloody, but he was able to get her to stand up.
However, there was a large man in the cargo car who didn’t want Phuong to go anywhere. He had apparently stopped the other men from continuing to rape her, and now he wanted to sleep with her as his reward. As bombs fell all around them, Kien had to fight this huge man, eventually knocking him to the floor by bashing him on the head with a pipe. While doing so, Kien called Phuong a “whore” in a state of frenzied anger. When they finally made it away from the cargo train, she had little desire to go on, but Kien picked her up and found a bicycle, which he used to transport them to a safe place nearby.
After resting for a bit, Kien and Phuong went to a small hamlet where there was an abandoned school. Phuong spoke unflinchingly about how doomed their relationship clearly was, acknowledging that they had a very dim future ahead of them and suggesting that they should probably accept that they would be going their separate ways. Kien was deeply troubled by what she said, but she fell asleep before the conversation ended. When Kien himself fell asleep, he didn’t wake up until much later—only to find that Phuong was no longer by his side. He anxiously searched the premises, discovering groups of North Vietnamese soldiers camped out in other parts of the abandoned school. He approached one group and asked if they’d seen Phuong, and they teased him by claiming that she was having sex with several other soldiers on the outskirts of the grounds at that very moment—a joke Kien didn’t take well, pulling out his gun and pointing it at the man who said it. He then ran to the edge of the property and peered inside some armored trucks, but Phuong wasn’t there.
Kien dropped to the ground and put his gun to his head, ready to end his life. Just then, more American planes appeared on the horizon, and the sounds of gunfire broke out everywhere. Kien’s gaze happened to fall on Phuong, who was naked and bathing in a nearby stream. Watching Phuong, Kien put down his gun. She seemed unbothered by the commotion, slowly drying off and then running right by him without seeing him. He heard her calling his name as she went back to the school. Instead of going to her, though, he walked in the other direction, making his way toward the highway so that he could continue on toward the frontlines.
Years later, Kien received a letter from a soldier named Ky, who explained that they had fought alongside each other several years ago and that he had recognized Kien at the time. He didn’t say anything then, though, because he didn’t want to shake Kien’s concentration. But now he had something to tell him: he was with the soldiers who had mocked Kien on that day at the school. Shortly after Kien left, Phuong came back and was frantically looking for him. She looked for so long and then, the next day, refused to leave the school. Ky wanted Kien to know it was clear she loved him. This letter buoyed Kien’s spirits and gave him hope, which sustained him through the rest of the war.
These days, Kien and Phuong are no longer together. They rekindled their relationship in the years immediately after the war, but it didn’t work out. Phuong had supported herself throughout the war by earning money as a sex worker, which added a complicated layer to their relationship. And Kien, for his part, had come back from war a much different person. Eventually, Phuong decided to leave Hanoi once and for all. Kien was distraught, but he let her go and then focused on writing his novel, drinking heavily and working on the book late into the night. When he finally finished, he left Hanoi, too, leaving the manuscript with a “mute girl” who lived in his building. She kept the pages for a long time and then gave them to a former soldier (the second narrator), who arranged them and compiled them for publication.
