Abstract
Nhat Tien, now in his early fifties and one of the best-known Vietnamese writers, lived in South Vietnam until a few years after the Communist take-over in 1975. He has published 16 books (14 novels and two collections of short stories) and received the Vietnamese National Literary Award in 1961 for his novel Them Hoang (‘The abandoned veranda’) in 1961. He was vice-president of the Vietnamese PEN club, director of the Huyen Tran Publishing Co, and editor of the weekly Thieu Nhi
In the late 1970s he left Vietnam as a ‘boat person’ and he is now living in the United States. The following short story is reprinted from the collection Tieng Ken (‘Sound of a clarinet’), published in 1983 by Van Hoc, San Diego, California.