Nguyen Dinh Thi

Born 1924 in Luang Prabang, Laos. Vietnamese writer. Member of the Workers’ Party of Vietnam.

Nguyen Dinh Thi fought in the underground anticolonialist movement (from 1943) and in the Vietnamese people’s War of Resistance (1945–54). His first novella, Forward to the Attacks! (1951, National Prize for Literature; Russian translation, 1961), depicts everyday life during the war and portrays the heroism of the fighters for the revolution. The novella contains a many-leveled depiction of the Vietnamese masses in their struggle for liberation. The poetry collection The Soldier (1956) gives a lyrical portrait of the Vietnamese revolutionary. Nguyen Dinh Thi’s short-story collection On the Banks of the Lo River (1957) is devoted to military heroism. His The Black Sea Poem (1959) deals with internationalism.

Nguyen Dinh Thi’s two-part work The Shores Are Collapsing (1962–70; Russian translation, 1970) depicts the history of the revolution in Vietnam. A description of the air war over the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is contained in the novellas In the Fire (1966; Russian translation, 1966) and The Front Line Outlines the Sky (1967).

Since 1957, Nguyen Dinh Thi has been general secretary of the Writers’ Union of Vietnam.