Hai Truyen Tu -- Two Prison Life Stories; Nguyen Chi Thien's prose in bilingual text

Two prose works by Nguyen Chi Thien in bilingual text -- English and Vietnamese. The narratives are of prison conditions in Communist Vietnam. The author was a political prisoner in North Vietnam for twenty-seven years between 1961 and 1991. He won the Rotterdam International Poetry prize while in prison in 1985 and it was not known if he were alive or dead.The two prison life stories are based on his experiences and interactions with other prisoners. One is a story of intellectual prisoners -- poets -- composing in their minds because they were not allowed pen and paper. The second is the story of a young woman on death row for killing a security officer in Hanoi who had harassed her. It is a love story as such events happen in prison. It is also the Old Man's (the author) philosophy of eternal life and hope expressed to The Maiden. Photographs of the Hanoi Central Prison Museum were donated for the author's benefit by Christopher McCooey of Kyoto, Japan. This edition includes bilingual biographical and publishing history of the Vietnamese dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien.