Hồ Anh Thái


Ho Anh Thai, one of the best known contemporary writers in Vietnam, is regarded as a literary phenomenon of the post-war generation.

Biography

Ho Anh Thai was born in 1960 in Hanoi. He graduated from Hanoi University of Diplomacy in 1983. After graduation, he worked as a diplomat abroad, especially in India, Iran and Indonesia. Fluent in several foreign languages, he earned a Ph.D. in Oriental Studies and he is also an Indologist and a visiting lecturer in the University of Washington and foreign universities. He was the elected president of Hanoi Writers’ Association from 2000 to 2010. And he was appointed the Vietnam Deputy Ambassador to Iran, and Indonesia.

Literary career

Ho Anh Thai first became known as a literary teenage prodigy with the publication of his first stories. As he matured, he became a voice for his generation, with his fresh, youthful style of writing, and works that centered on the lives and adventures of young people
and students, highlighting their desire to discover the world. Some of his works of this period are the novels Men and Vehicle Run in the Moonlight, The Women on the Island, Behind the Red Mist and the short story collections The Goat Meat
Special, Fragment of a Man, etc.
Early in the 1990s, he published a series of humorous and thoughtful stories about the six years he has spent in India: The Man Who Stood on One Leg, The Indian, A Sigh through the Laburnums, The Barter, etc.
From the 2000s, his published books became more experimental, playful in language and marked by a wry and sardonic tone that was both much appreciated by his growing readership and also considered controversial: the novels The Apocalypse Hotel,
Ten and One Nights, RHT is Rat Hunt Team, Erased by the Wind, His Children are Scattered on the Road, Burning Van Gogh, Five Letters of Credence etc. and short stories collections The Narration of 265 Days,
Four Paths to the Fun House, Man is Here and the Sky is There etc.
Ho Anh Thai came back to the theme of India with the novel The Buddha, Savitri and I, published in 2007. This is the first Vietnamese novel which contemporizes the Buddha through an interesting plot and simple style set in a multi-layered structure which
effectively broadens his use of time and space.
Ho Anh Thai's books have always been best-sellers; part of the phenomenon of his work is that he has a large readership in spite of the way he has eschewed formulaic writing and strives for freshness and originality in form and language.
His fiction has been
published abroad, translated into over ten languages, including English, French, Korean, Swedish etc.

Selected works

- Short story prize 1983-1984 of Van Nghe newspaper for The Boy Who Waits at the Bus-stop.
- Best novel award of the Vietnam Writers’ Association and the Vietnam Trade Union for Men and Vehicle Run in the Moonlight.
- Literature award 1995 of the Union of Literature and Art Associations for The Man Who Stood on One Leg.
- Annual prize 2002 of the Vietnam Writers’ Association for The Narration in 265 Days.
- Annual Prize 2012 for the Best Novel of Ha Noi Writers' Association for RHT is Rat Hunt Team.
- Good Book Prize 2015 of Vietnam Publishers' Association for the novel His Children are Scattered on the Road.
- Good Book Prize 2016 of IRED and Phan Chau Trinh culture Foundation for the novel Apocalypse Hotel.