The full and well-organized collection of short stories is like a gift, a thank you from him to his family, hometown, and friends. Notably, the work was released to readers on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of Vietnam Revolutionary Journalism Day (June 21, 1925 - June 21, 2025). For a journalist like Le Phi, this is a memorable milestone in his writing career.
This short story collection "Going Backwards" is also one of the last publications of Da Nang Publishing House before it stopped operating and dissolved after 40 years of formation and development.
The short story collection "Going Against" with 21 short stories, contains the past, despair, sadness and desire to live, the author's desire to "swim against the current" to be able to touch the past, to exist in the contemporary social reality with a series of changes taking place in every corner of life. The author anchors in himself the desire to give back that stream of emotions to readers through his meticulous storytelling.
He writes, tells as if he is not telling, autobiographical but fictional, speaks of his concerns but hidden behind each word, each character is a deep inner world , containing many things that not everyone can easily confide, write, at least to themselves.
Everyone in this life grows up with wounds in their souls, and those wounds will be filled and healed by time with kindness and love.
Cover of the short story collection "Going Against" by journalist Le Phi. (Photo: ANH DAO)
And once, the confrontation becomes cold, the pain becomes a rock pressing down under one's feet, forcing each person to find a way out of that path, that rock. Like water, no matter what obstacles there are, water knows how to find its own way out.
Reading the short story collection by author Le Phi, the reader will be drawn into that flow, to be able to feel and understand with the writer some incomplete things about the place of birth, about the creator, about the "scars" that cling to the subconscious, difficult to heal.
Reading the short story collection by author Le Phi, the reader will be drawn into that flow, to be able to feel and understand with the writer some incomplete things about the place of birth, about the creator, about the "scars" that cling to the subconscious, difficult to heal.
The short story collection "Going Backwards" opens up an incomplete and incomplete memory of the character "I" (the author), and also wraps up a chapter of memory that the author dares to face, be present and write on the page with many thoughts, worries and confessions to himself.
The author does not intend to arrange the order of the 21 short stories in this collection, but if one is attentive, one will realize that this is a flow. Each short story is a slice, but when read from beginning to end, it is a complete picture of a society, a life, a miniature human condition with a full range of emotions.
The image of an incomplete soldier returning from war is depicted by the author from the image of his father. A generation ready to make trade-offs and sacrifices for a greater cause, for peace and independence. But the harshness of the battlefield, and the fear that sometimes appears in each layer of thought, has caused them to face many adversities. Bringing resentment back to their homeland with unexplained injustices, then lying in the ground... All are depicted in the short stories "Deserter", "The shadow of a wandering soldier in Khe Pagoda"...
Reading carefully the short story "Going Against" - the story he chose as the general title for the whole book, we can see the author's thoughts about his homeland, the land full of sun, wind, and hardship, located behind Bai Soi, Lam River and the lives of the people in that village with deaths "against the truth of life".
The pages were written with all the author's heart, looking towards his homeland in a profound sadness. (Photo: ANH DAO)
Ru Chua Khe – in the author’s memories, the homeland, beautiful and infinitely sad. Sad because of the love in his life, carrying too much compassion, pain and wandering around with no way out. There is ultimate resignation, but there is also light like a unique lamp, illuminating and guiding the way.
Social reality is expressed through short stories such as The Hidden Spider Web, Two Damn Guys, Premature Retirement, Story at the Flag Office... These are short stories that describe reality, rewriting the encounters with social reality filled with calculations, factions, gangs of personal interests, and many funny and sad stories when the whole society rushes to follow the money race, among which, many people have slipped, fallen into sin.
As he wrote in the preface to his first book: “While still in school, I started writing. Not only writing on paper but also writing in my head when there were characters who seemed to want to whisper something that was hard to name. They seemed to come out of memories, from the wounds of time, from an unfinished story someone told on the porch full of Lao wind and the sound of cicadas. I kept them for a long time before I was calm enough to sit down and call each person’s name back onto the page.”
With a debut work, this brainchild of Le Phi still has a few things that have not been said or written yet, but I believe that the journey of words always has a path for the writer to see and go further. Literature will open up another quiet space for each person's soul to settle down there to gain a little more strength, to continue to step into the flowing life out there.
Author Le Phi, born in 1985, is from Lang Chua Khe, Nghe An. He currently lives and works in Da Nang city.
CHERRY
Source: https://nhandan.vn/di-nguoc-tap-truyen-ngan-dau-tay-cua-nha-bao-le-phi-post886980.html
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