Nguyen Cong Hoan (1903-1977)

Nguyen Cong Hoan was a native of Xuan Cau village, Nghia Tru commune, Van Giang district. He was born on March 6^th, 1903 in a Confucian scholar family dissatisfying with the colonial government and its new officials. When he was young, he listened and learned by heart a number of poems, parallel sentences, satire and humorous stories against mandarins in his family, which then had the significant influence on his writing style.

In 1926, he graduated from the College of Education and taught in many places such as Hai Duong, Nam Sach, Kinh Mon, Lao Cai, Nam Dinh and Tra Co until the August Revolution. After the success of the August Revolution (1945), he worked as a director in charge of censoring the Northern newspapers cum the director of Northern Propaganda Department.  

When the national resistance war was launched, he enrolled in the army and became an editor of the “Ve quoc quan” (National defense army) newspaper, Director of Army's cultural school as well as Head and Chief Editor of "Army reading" newspaper. In 1948, he joined Vietnam's Labor Party. In 1951, he worked for Elaboration Centre of the training and education sector to elaborate training curriculum for pupils and complied the book "Vietnam’s modern history from the French domination period to 1950" for Grade 7 (In the 9-year training program) and wrote articles for "People's Education" - the first organ of the Ministry of Education at that time. He was one of modern writers whose prose works were taken into curriculum books in response to needs for training pupils to master Vietnamese language in terms of speaking, writing and understanding. 

After 1954, he continued his writing career in the position of Chairman of Writers’ Association (In the first term from 1957-1958), and then a member of its Standing Committee in following terms as well as member of Executive Board of Vietnam’s Literature and Art Association. In the early of 1960s, his name was mentioned in the Soviet encyclopedia dictionary. In 1960s, he was considered as “a great writer of satire short stories” by Prof. Doctor Niculin.  

He started to write at his school age and identified his writing style right at the beginning of his career. He focused on topics reflecting the contemporary society with the realist and satire ways of description. He described the vivid picture of semi-feudal colonialism society, which was full of unfairness, fraudulence and cruelty. He criticized unhesitatingly the greedy and disgraceful government officials who occupied high positions in the society without talent and virtue; the stupid and stingy despotic landowners; and the unscrupulous bourgeois with the rotten and ridiculous ways of life who considered money the most important thing. However, he also shared his sympathy with the poor and defended them.

He is one of the greatest writers following the literary realism, which was mainstreamed with profound romanticism. His prose works received high appreciation and respect from the readers. His first prose work “Kiep hong nhan” (The fate of a beautiful lady), written in 1920 and published by “Tan Da” Bookstore in 1923, was one of contributions for the national prose in Vietnamese script. With “Kep Tu Ben”, written in 1927 and published in 1935, he became the “great writer of satire and short stories” (Le Thi Duc Hanh). Receiving the laud of 18 newspapers from the North to the South, “Kep Tu Ben” made a great shock in the literature circles at that moment and became the hottest topic of pen war between two points of view “Art for the sake of art” and “Art for the sake of life”.

As a talented and committed writer, he saw, listened and refined tragedies in real life and reflected them in his works in a satirical manner. All of these factors created a typical and distinctive writing style and made him different from other contemporary realistic writers.

His prolific writing period was from 1920 to 1945. He also had a great number of novels. However, his most typical writing style was imprinted in short stories. One of his famous novels, published in 1938, which was written when the Democracy Front Movement reached its highest peak and affected all aspects of life, was “Buoc Duong Cung” (Dead end). This works was banned from circulation by the colonial government. After 1954, he also wrote some short stories concerning land reforms and revolutionary fighters.

In June 6^th, 1977, he died at the age of 74 in Hanoi.                                                   

After 50 years of writing, he left a huge number of collections behind, including 200 short stories and 30 novels with a number of memoirs, notes, linguistic and literature analysis essays. A lot of his works were translated in many countries such as Russia, China, Bulgaria, India, Japan and Albany, etc.

In 1988, on the occasion of the 85^th anniversary of his birthday, in a seminar “Nguyen Cong Hoan, life and career” held in Hanoi, a number of Vietnamese famous writers and literature researchers attended the seminar to pay their respect and appreciation to the novel “Dong rac cu” (Old rubbish-heap) which was banned and withdrawn from circulation in 1963.

Nguyen Cong Hoan was honorably recognized as one of Vietnam’s 14 most talented writers during the twentieth century. He was rewarded with the Ho Chi Minh prize in the first phase of conferment.