Hồ Anh Thái

Ho Anh Thai is one of the best known contemporary writers in Vietnam and regarded as a literary phenomenon of the post-war generation.[1]

Biography

Ho Anh Thai was born in 1960 in Hanoi. He graduated from Hanoi University of Diplomacy in 1983. After graduation, he worked as a diplomat and journalist abroad, especially in India, Iran and Indonesia. Fluent in several foreign languages, he earned a Ph.D. in Oriental Studies and he is also a lecturer and an Indologist. He was the elected president of Hanoi Writers’ Association from 2000 to 2010. He is the Vietnam Deputy Ambassador to Iran (2011-2015), and Indonesia (from 2015).

Literary career

Ho Anh Thai first became known as a literary teenage prodigy with the publication of his first stories, and as he matured, became a voice for his generation, with his fresh, youthful style of writing, and works that centered on the lives and adventures of young people and students, highlighting their desire to discover the world. His emblematic works of this period are the novels Men and Vehicle Run in the Moonlight (1986), The Women on the Island (1986), Behind the Red Mist (1989) and the short story collections The Goat Meat Special (1988), Fragment of a Man (1991) etc. Early in the 1990s, after he had studied and worked abroad for some time, including six years in India, Ho Anh Thai published a series of unique, humorous and profound stories about that country: The Man Who Stood on One Leg, The Indian, A Sigh through the Laburnums, The Barter etc.

From the 2000s his published books became more experimental, playful in language and marked by a wry and sardonic tone that was both much appreciated by his growing readership and also considered controversial: the novels The Apocalypse Hotel (2002), Ten and One Nights (2006), RHT is Rat Hunt Team (2011), Erased by the Wind (2012) and short stories collections The Narration of 265 Days (2001), Four Paths to the Fun House (2004) etc.

Ho Anh Thai came back to the theme of India with the novel The Buddha, Savitri and I, published in 2007. This is the first Vietnamese novel which contemporizes the Buddha through an interesting plot and simple style set in a multi-layered structure which effectively broadens his use of time and space. Ho Anh Thai’s books have always been best-sellers; part of the phenomenon of his work is that he has a large readership in spite of the way he has eschewed formulaic writing and strives for freshness and originality in form and language.

His fiction has been published abroad, translated into over ten languages, including English, French, Swedish etc.

Selected Works

Awards

- Short story prize 1983-1984 of Van Nghe (Literature and Arts) newspaper for The Boy Who Waits at the Bus-stop.
- Best novel award (5-year award, 1986–1990) of the Vietnam Writers’ Association and the Vietnam Trade Union for Men and Vehicle Run in the Moonlight.
- Literature award 1995 of the Union of Literature and Art Associations for The Man Who Stood on One Leg.
- Annual prize 2002 of the Vietnam Writers’ Association for The Narration in 265 Days (refused by author). - Annual Prize 2012 for the Best Novel of Ha Noi Writers' Association for RHT is Rat Hunt Team.

References

  1. ↑ Nghiên cứu Văn học Trung tâm khoa học xã hội và nhân văn quốc gia (Vietnam) 2007 Page 69 "Có đến dàm chuc người, kê từ Tô Hoài, Ở tuồi ngoài 85 vẫn viết, cho đên lứa tuổi đã vào gần 50 như Nguyễn Quang Thiều (1957), Tạ Duy Anh (1959), Hồ Anh Thái (1960)."

External links

Ho Anh Thai:

Behind the Red Mist:

Raising the Cause of the Individual in the New Vietnam:

Garbage and Passion:

The Dried River:

Apocalypse Hotel:

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