Update 25/2/15 Re what follows below: As of today, I still haven’t had any response from Random House so I’m going to assume that the copy referred to is indeed a counterfeit and that they have nothing to do with it. (In fact they may be victims too, through lost sales). I have had a response from Fishpond (who sold me the book through its Sell Yours system, i.e. they provide a space for people to sell second-hand copies) and they say I can return the book at the seller’s expense and get a refund, and they’re investigating. I am leaving the rest of this post as is, to warn other readers to be careful. (After all, I’ve never encountered a counterfeit book before, I bet most other people haven’t either).
***
Ok, before I start with my impressions of this novel, here’s a copy of some feedback I sent to Random House UK:
The book I received (The Sorrow of War) is not the quality I have come to expect from Vintage (Random House). This edition ISBN 9780749397111 is published under the Minerva imprint, but it looks more like a pirated copy. It has the same cover as the original Vintage edition with the B&W photo of a soldier, except that there are typos in the back page blurbs (“untilnow”, “Pulitze”, “require reading”), and the Vintage logo has been replaced by Minerva.
The verso page looks a lot like a badly done scan of the Vintage verso page, and nowhere on the pages (as distinct from the cover) is Minerva Press mentioned at all. The scanned pages are badly mis-aligned, and some words in the text have letters incompletely printed, making it hard to read.
If this edition has indeed been reprinted by Random House as Print On Demand under the Minerva imprint (See http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/about-us/about-us/companies/library-archive/history-of-the-archive for the history of their acquisitions) then Random House should be ashamed of themselves.
Ok, got that? Yes, I am very cross indeed that a fine book like this one, should be so shabbily published. I have had Print-on-Demand books before, and while I don’t like the cheap print, they have been readable enough. But this one is a disgrace.
What I didn’t know when I sent that feedback because I hadn’t read very far, was that there’s an even bigger problem: some of the pages are out of order and some of them are missing altogether. I now think it’s possible that this copy is a counterfeit copy, possibly not published by Random House’s Minerva imprint at all…
Here’s what happened:
I wanted to know something about the translation process for this book. What did it mean, I wondered, when it says that this English version by Frank Palmos is ‘from the original translation by Phan Thanh Hao’? I had to go to Wikipedia to find out:
Bảo Ninh achieved prominence in Hanoi with the first version of the novel, Thân phận của tình yêu (literally, The Destiny of Love), which was published in roneo form (similar to photocopying) before 1990. Soon afterwards Phan Thanh Hao translated it into English and took the manuscript to the British publishers Secker & Warburg. Geoffrey Mulligan, an editor there, commissioned Frank Palmos, an Australian journalist who had reported on the Vietnam War and written about it in his book Ridding the Devils (1990), to write an English version based on the raw translation. Bao Ninh had read Phan Thanh Hao’s Vietnamese translation of Ridding the Devils and was willing to accept this arrangement. After several meetings with both the author and the translator, Hao, in Hanoi, and journeys throughout Vietnam to check details, Palmos wrote the English version over seven months . It was published in 1994 under the title The Sorrow of War.
The book went on to win the International Foreign Fiction Prize in 1994, and was included in the Best 50 Translations of the 20th Century by the Society of Authors in London, 2010. So although it’s not clear to me whether the ‘English version’ is just a version edited to tidy up English idiom and so forth, or whether it’s a thorough rewrite resulting in a different version altogether, the judges for these prestigious awards must have been satisfied enough with this dual translation process to award the accolades as they did, and the author shared the prize money with the two translators. Interesting, eh?
Alas, Wikipedia goes on to say that counterfeits of the English version became widely available in Vietnam, aimed at the tourist trade. Counterfeit sales have reportedly far exceeded sales of the original edition. Is this what I have read, a counterfeit that means the author has received nothing in payment for my purchase? I suspect this is the case.
But it’s not just that the author has been diddled out of his royalties…
I was becoming deeply absorbed in the book, a melancholy account of the way in which war dehumanises people and a meditation on the author’s writing process when I reached the part where the narrator Kien meets the girl Hanh. Hanh was almost immediately re-named Hanna, which threw me a bit, but that was nothing compared to my confusion when at the end of pages 58-59, she calls a halt to the digging of a air-raid shelter in her room so that she can try it for size. She then says ‘We might need some…’ and I turned the page and was taken aback by …”We’ve each been ghosts in each other’s mind,’ he said, and lo! Kien is with a different girl called Phuong, and that’s because page 59 is followed by page 76-77 – and then reverts to page 62-3. But page 60-61 is nowhere to be found – I looked through the entire book for it, only to find that there was more grief to come. This is the page sequence:
p62-3
p80-81
p66-67
p84-85
p70-71
p88-89
p74-75
and from there on it seems to be in the correct order, though I noticed that a fair few of the page numbers are actually written by hand -not typed – so I am not entirely confident about that. But the book is unreadable anyway, I can’t make sense of it without the missing pages.
I have abandoned books before, but none with such regret as this one, because from what I have read of it, it is a beautiful war novel, nostalgic for lost youth and lost values, and deeply personal in tone. Bao Ninh served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade and of 500 men who served with him, most of them teenagers, he was one of only ten to survive. He begins the book by describing his work with the Missing In Action Body Collecting Team and although he is restrained in the telling, the Jungle of Screaming Souls is a terrible place to be. The book is said by an impressive collection of blurbers to be another All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, but until I can source a legitimate copy with its pages in order and intact, I am going to have to wait to see if this is true.
Update 25/8/17 See Bill’s review at The Australian Legend.
Author: Bao Ninh
Title: The Sorrows of War
From the original translation by Phan Thanh Hao, first published in 1987, English version by Frank Palmos
Publisher: (allegedly) Minerva, an imprint of Vintage (Random House)
ISBN: 9780749397
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Hi Lisa – I was going to study this with my IB class a few years ago but they just didn’t like it so we studied Woman at Point Zero instead. If you email me your address, I’ll send you my copy. It’s the least I can do after the number of books you’ve reviewed that I have gone on to read.
LikeLike
By: Glenda on February 23, 2015
at 7:50 am
Glenda, that is so very kind of you! I’ll email the address now:)
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2015
at 8:25 am
I saw this very title in a second-hand bookshop, Lisa, and, lo and behold, it too was a dodgy-looking photocopy. I wouldn’t be surprised if pages were missing either.
LikeLike
By: evansaul on February 26, 2015
at 2:04 pm
I think it’s tragic. Vietnam is such a poor country, and it must be so hard for any author to make a living there, and yet people rip off the author & the legitimate publisher like this.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on February 26, 2015
at 2:08 pm
Lisa: You are right. You got one of the several thousand counterfeits that came to life on Hanoi streets around 1997. Some even decided they would try writing the English themselves, pretending it to be a different book, and they are easily discovered after two or three paragraphs of mauled language.
An English Version means that months of extra work checking was done translating the ideas rather than the word-for-word reproduction, much of which would not make sense because of the cultural differences. There were other attempts to translate directly from the Vietnamese, but they failed, so the 14 or 15 other translations are all from my work. Madame Hao is credited with bringing the original manuscript to light at a time when the Communist government had oppressive censorship, some of which remains today in the political arena. US publishers use the word “edited” which is incorrect. The book was not edited in the traditional sense, and this was done without my permission. But they were late on the scene, after all the awards had been won. Sorrow has changed the entire literary scene in modern Vietnam, so it will be used as a reference for decades to come. If you can get a good copy from England you will get one intact. Sorrow is not Bao Ninh’s only book, but it the only significant book with international appeal.
– Frank Palmos
(Dr Francis Palmos,
Historian, UWA,
Western Australia). .
LikeLike
By: Frank Palmos on May 26, 2015
at 4:41 pm
Hello Frank, thank you so much for clarifying this.
Congratulations on your work, even in the mangled version that I had I could see that it was an important book.
I now have a good copy, thanks to a good-hearted reader of this blog *smile* but I haven’t read it yet. Other things have got in the way, but I shall certainly return to it.
Best wishes, Lisa
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 26, 2015
at 5:45 pm
Thanks for the link, Lisa. And you got Palmos to comment, wow! I was wondering if Wiki had the translation process right, so glad to see it confirmed at the source.
LikeLike
By: wadholloway on August 25, 2017
at 7:45 pm
Forgot to tick notify
LikeLike
By: wadholloway on August 25, 2017
at 7:46 pm
Well, I have a good copy now, thanks to Glenda Price who very kindly sent me her copy. And I have moved it to very near the top of my TBR thanks to the reminder from you!
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on August 25, 2017
at 10:36 pm
Lisa, SoW gets better and more revealing as the years unfold. I saw BN in Hanoi recently. He won’t travel overseas now, even to collect yet another big international prize, this one from South Kirea.
Frank Palmos,
Scarborough WA
LikeLike
By: Frank Palmos on August 25, 2017
at 11:08 pm
Hello Frank, how nice to hear from you again:) It’s sad to hear that he’s getting on, but it’s good to hear that he’s getting the recognition he deserves.
Now, I wonder if you can tell us anything about the state of publishing in Vietnam and shed any light on why we in Australia see so few books from there?
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on August 26, 2017
at 8:54 am
Lisa: Australian publishers played follow-the-leader on SoWar, so perhaps they take the same approach with other books from the region. None seem to realise the Australian involvement in Asia’s most successful postwar novel nor were there any reprints within Australia. Random House reprinted SoW and wrongly stated I had been the Editor, whereas my English version was much more than that, as recent history suggests, for no other translator has been able to bring BN’s other works to world attention.
That said, my translation of the factual Revolutionary Diaries of a young medical student in Indonesia, titled ‘Revolution in the City of Heroes’ (Monash University Publishing, 2016) is the best, well written short history of how the Republic was formed in 1945, ideal for our high school students and the general public, yet not a single review has appeared in the Australian press. That might be Monash’s poor system, or book editors’ biases. The original Indonesian language book is quite famous and my translation of it got marvellous reviews and sells well there under the title: ‘Student Soldiers.’
Indonesia and Vietnam swing in and out of media fashion depending upon how much a threat they are perceived to be, I suppose. Indonesian Studies enrolments in our universities have tapered off sharply and Vietnam is on very few study agendas. Next week I lecture students on both nations and perhaps half those enrolled will bother turning up, preferring to listen to podcasts.
This lack of interaction is by no means restricted to my subjects. It is a general trend with massive drop out percentages in all universities, during Year 1.
I forgot to mention why BN does not travel: He is a very heavy smoker, and no airline, even in Vietnam, allows smoking on board. So, he holidays by train, usually to Danang, which he regards as equal to any overseas location. FP
LikeLike
By: Frank Palmos on August 26, 2017
at 9:42 am
Dr Palmos, is the Wiki version of the translation correct? The audio book credits no translator (which I think is wrong) but just says the copyright in the translation is with Secker & Warburg. And let Bao Ninh know he is still winning fans in Australia!
LikeLike
By: wadholloway on August 26, 2017
at 9:52 am
Publishers, film producers all share the same mean streaks of giving as little credit as possible, to avoid paying royalties, knowing legal action against them by creators is prohibitively costly.The audio book would never have seen the light without my work yet they proceed without credit. The company knows no reprisal likely, yet my version was the basis for almost every translation into a European language. I published my major Indonesian history in Indonesian first (for example) to avoid plagiarists copying my work and translating it into their own Indonesian. I’ve not heard the audio, who published it? FP
LikeLike
By: Frank Palmos on August 26, 2017
at 11:07 am
The audio book I used for my review was put out by Trantor, read by James Langton. I got it from Vic Park library.
LikeLike
By: wadholloway on August 26, 2017
at 11:14 am
W: Thank you. l will ask Scarborough library to get a copy. l hope it is done in neutral English.
LikeLike
By: Frank Palmos on August 26, 2017
at 11:52 am
Let us know what you think of it, when you get it – I’m still waiting for Belmont to get me a paper copy, due to Barnett govt unfunding interlibrary loans apparently. (W=Bill)
LikeLike
By: wadholloway on August 26, 2017
at 12:39 pm
What!!!!!!!!!!!! Unfunding!!!!
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on August 26, 2017
at 1:21 pm
Happened a couple of budgets ago, and was partially restored after outroar, but interlibrary delivery runs are only once or twice a week.
LikeLike
By: wadholloway on August 26, 2017
at 1:55 pm
What a pain…
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on August 26, 2017
at 2:11 pm
Frank, I share your pessimism about the Australia failure to engage in Asia via education. I was president of the Victorian Indonesian Language Teachers Association so I was involved with policy and program formation, and from a good but belated start in the 1990s, it all fell apart under Howard and has never recovered. Indonesian was not the only casualty, and languages were not the only casualty: it’s the lack of interest in our region that is the problem.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on August 26, 2017
at 10:12 am
Its Bali, Bombs or Fanatics published on Indonesia today. Even our non-Indonesian Asian students avoid studying Indonesia, Vietnam, India. But I have a lovely series of Stories of a Young Reporter in the new Republic of Indonesia, awaiting publication in the Jakarta Post. Perfect for an enterprising Australian publisher, good Book Club reading,humorous history. FP
LikeLike
By: Frank Palmos on August 26, 2017
at 11:12 am
[…] at ANZLitLovers discussed The Sorrow of War a couple of years ago (here) and specifically the problem of English language counterfeit copies. This discussion takes a very […]
LikeLike
By: The Sorrow of War, Bao Ninh | theaustralianlegend on August 26, 2017
at 11:25 am
[…] Lady of the Realm is tempting me back to a ‘re-reading’ of The Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh, another book about the Vietnam War, recently read by Bill at The Australian Legend which reminded me […]
LikeLike
By: Six Degrees of Separation, from Wild Swans to… | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on September 2, 2017
at 12:19 pm