Author · Vietnam
Nam Cao
Died in 1951
Trần Hữu Tri, who signs as Nam Cao, was born on 29 October 1915 in Đại Hoàng, in Hà Nam province, to a Catholic peasant family. An office clerk in Saigon, then a teacher in private schools in Hanoi, he lived on freelance work before devoting himself to short stories, in which he portrays poor peasants and penniless minor intellectuals. Won over to the revolution, he became a journalist and, textbook in hand, took to the maquis of the North. He was killed in an ambush on 30 November 1951, at the age of thirty-six.