Short stories
Gió đầu mùa
Not translated into English
Thạch Lam · 1937
Synopsis
Seventeen short tales about ordinary people, in the suburbs of Hanoi and the market towns of the delta. A mother counting her pennies, a clerk who does not dare go home, children who give their quilted coat to a little neighbour girl on the day of the first cold, a stallholder waiting for a customer in the rain. Almost nothing happens in them, and everything is decided in a gesture or a silence, at the end of a page.
Context
The collection appeared in 1937 with the group's publishing house, whose newspaper the author was then editing. It displays the manner that earns him his place: no plot, a situation taken at human height, and attention paid to those about whom the prose of his time did not speak, women traders, clerks, poor children. His elders wrote novels with a thesis; he has nothing to prove, and that is what has made him last. He died of tuberculosis five years after this book, and his work thus spans six years.
Who it is for
About one hundred and fifty pages, in Vietnamese. Each text runs to a few pages and can be read on its own; the book nonetheless gains from being taken in order.
Prizes and reception
The book through which the short narrative became a major form in Vietnam, and its author's most widely read.