Not only painting, Tran Ha also publishes books. In June 2025, artist Tran Ha introduced to readers the short story collection "Shadow in the opposite direction", published by the Writers' Association Publishing House. An artist publishing a collection of short stories shows his talent, as he said, when he devotes all his mind to colors, in his spare time he paints pictures with short stories.
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The collection of stories “The Shadow in the Opposite Direction” is 204 pages long, with 23 short stories. I read it and saw in it a professional writer, observing life very delicately, capturing the moods and inner changes of each fate. After the struggles of human life that he could not put into his paintings, he wrote, sincerely, wrote to relieve the things around him.
As an artist, Tran Ha draws the cover, illustrates and designs his own books, so his books bear his personal mark. What is even more precious is that Tran Ha writes: "Book not for sale" on the back cover. That is the book he dedicates to book lovers.
Flipping through the short stories in the book, he chose a theme with the main character being an artist. In the story “The Fateful Train”, he tells the story of Thiep (a final year student of the painting department, University of Fine Arts) meeting a girl named Hong on the train from Hanoi to Saigon. He cherished drawing a portrait of Hong. After many times, the portrait was completed according to his imagination. The story conveys a small philosophy: “Love and art do not need to be careful and forced to be successful, but must be natural with emotions, with sincerity…”.
“Where the palette turns into gray smoke” is also a story about painting, set in Da Lat. Cuong, a painter, has a beautiful love affair with a girl named Nguyet in Da Lat. He painted many pictures of Da Lat, waiting for the day Nguyet graduates from university to open a gallery with those pictures. The story detail is quite classic when Nguyet’s husband, a foreigner, came to Cuong and asked to buy those pictures of Da Lat. “I’m sorry, I burned those pictures twenty years ago,” the painter said… Da Lat, that place is already a memory.
Tran Ha's writing is not polished, does not describe scenes or express inner feelings through words, but his short stories lead readers to the end of the story, even though they can guess the ending. His stories are full of colors.
KHUE VIET TRUONG
Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/van-hoa/202507/truyen-ngan-tu-nhung-buc-tranh-0c950d8/
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