In 2022, while meeting local writers, Nguyễn Xuân Phúc, then the Vietnamese president, expressed the hope that a Vietnamese author would one day win a Nobel Prize in Literature. What he failed to mention was that two had already come close: Hồ Hữu Tường was nominated in 1969 and Vũ Hoàng Chương in 1972. But both were from the South, making their work and accolades politically inconvenient for the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) to recognise.
A year after Nguyễn’s comment, Dương Thu Hương won the Cino del Duca World Prize, one the richest literary prizes in the world. There was little coverage in the country’s domestic media. Several articles from CPV outlets dismissed the prize as politically charged and described Dương as a traitor whose books “contained content that criticise, undermine and deny revolutionary achievements, expressing subtle and malicious intention to oppose the Vietnamese Communist Party and the State of Vietnam”. People in Vietnam only learnt of Dương’s win via social media.
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- Tags: Issue 36, Thiện Việt, Vietnam