Short stories
The General Retires
Tướng về hưu
Nguyễn Huy Thiệp · 1987
Synopsis
A general comes home to live with his son at seventy, after a life spent in the army. He finds a house he no longer understands: his wife has lost her mind, his daughter-in-law is a doctor and keeps the household's money, guard dogs are raised in the yard and the leftovers from the clinic are used to feed them. The son, who narrates, watches his father bustle about, try to help, and run up against customs that he judges and that no one discusses.
Context
The text appeared in three instalments in the writers' union weekly, in June 1987, two years after the launch of the renewal that opened up the country's economy; its portrait of an officer without heroism made enough noise that the government had it examined by cadres and officers, and the book gradually disappeared from the bookshops once the renewal had been tempered. The author had already given two stories to the same magazine the year before, but it was this one that made him a literary phenomenon.
Who it is for
A very short story, dry in tone and without commentary. The refusal to judge the characters is what caused debate in Vietnam when it was published.
Prizes and reception
Adapted for the screen the following year, translated into French and then English, it remains the contemporary Vietnamese text most widely read outside the country.