Writing and Policing

This article proposes a new approach to analyzing two unconventional North Vietnamese novels: Trần Dần’s Crossroads and Lampposts and Bảo Ninh’s The Sorrow of War. Drawing from two theoretical models, the article highlights three distinctive characteristics shared by these novels: heterogeneous time, patchwork narrative, and mysterious narrative voices. It argues that while the staging of time in Sorrow and Crossroads demonstrates Trần Dần’s and Bảo Ninh’s attempts to challenge monolithic narratives on Vietnamese history, their patchwork characteristic reflects the influence of the police state on North Vietnamese writers and thinkers throughout the second half of the twentieth century.