Vu Trong Phung
Vietnamese writer
Died when: 26 years 358 days (323 months)Star Sign: Libra
Vu Tr?ng Ph?ng (???, Hanoi, 20 October 1912 – Hanoi, 13 October 1939) was a popular Vietnamese author and journalist, who was considered to be one of the most influential figures of 20th century Vietnamese literature.
Today, several of his works are taught in Vietnamese schools.Ph?ng's ancestral village was H?o village, M?Hào District, Hung Yên Province, yet he was born, grew up, and died in Hanoi.
The fact that his father died of tuberculosis when he was only seven months old resulted in Ph?ng's being brought up mainly by his mother.
After finishing primary school, 16-year-old Vu Tr?ng Ph?ng was forced to stop schooling and earn his own living.
In 1939, he died from tuberculosis at the age of 26 (27 by the Vietnamese system of age reckoning), a week before his 27th birthday.
Ph?ng wrote prolifically during the 1930s, and "produced a body of writing that", according to historian Peter B.Zinoman, "stands today as the single most remarkable individual achievement in modern Vietnamese literature." Although he only wrote for a short span of time, with his first work being the short story Ch?ng n?ng lên du?ng ('Set off with crutches') on the newspaper Ng?
Báo in 1930, he had left an impressive collection of literature works: over 30 short stories, 9 novels, 9 reports, 7 plays, along with a translated play from French, some literature reviews and pieces of criticism, and hundreds of articles on matters of politics, society, and culture.
Some excerpts from his publications, for example Dumb Luck (Vietnamese: S?Ð?) and The Storm (Vietnamese: Giông T?), became part of Vietnamese literature textbooks.
Famous for the satire in his works, Ph?ng was compared to Balzac by some critics.However, due to his "realistic" descriptions and heavy emphasis on sex, he was called to court by the French authorities in Hanoi for "outraging morality" (French: outrage aux bonnes moeurs).
Later on, his works were prohibited from being published or read in North Vietnam because they were deemed "obscene publications" until the late 1980s.