Novel
Nửa chừng xuân
Not translated into English
Khái Hưng · 1933
Synopsis
Mai is beautiful, educated and has no money. Her father dead, she raises her young brother Huy alone. Lộc, the son of a great house, wants to marry her; his mother, who has other plans, does not want a daughter-in-law without a fortune and schemes to separate them, even making each believe that the other has abandoned them. Mai finds herself alone with a child to support, and refuses the place offered to her when she is found again.
Context
Published in instalments in the group's weekly in 1933, then in volume form the following year, it sold as no Vietnamese title had before it. The author gave up the profits to his comrades, who used them to fund for four years the literary prize announced in the newspaper of 25 May 1934. The book attacks the extended family without overturning it: its strength lies in leaving it to the reader to decide.
Who it is for
About two hundred pages, in Vietnamese. It attacks old customs without breaking with them, and this caution explains part of its success.
Prizes and reception
The first book in the country to sell in the thousands, it funded four years of the prize that his group awarded.