In this article I first describe the land reform program which took place in North Vietnam from 1953 to 1956. Then I explain how it became a literary theme in some novels published three or four decades later. Because it led to excesses, including the . . .

This is not an article but rather two chapters from a book, Vo Phien and the Sadness of Exile, which describes the life and work of the Vietnamese writer Vo Phien. Born in 1925 in central Vietnam, Vo Phien joined the anti-French revolutionary movement . . .