I’ve just finished ‘The Sorrow of War’ by Bao Ninh. It’s a beautiful written novel from the perspective of a Viet Cong soldier of the American War in Vietnam. However, it is a book I hesitate to recommend. 

The images of violence, war and psychological destruction kept me, as a reader, disturbed and often awake at night. I’ve not had this happen since reading ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy. 

The non chronological narrative layers more and more meanings onto already disturbing events in the soldier’s past. It captures what war does to the minds of people who survive it’s violence. The book is both difficult and essential and all generals and politicians should be made to read it.