Biography
Nguyễn Tuân was born and raised at the village Nhân Mục, Thượng Đình, which is now the neighborhood Nhân Chính, district Thanh Xuân, Hanoi, Vietnam. His family was the traditional Confucianists, but by the time of his childhood, Confucianism and the traditional Chinese-influenced education had started to decline, replaced by the more modern French-influenced culture.
In 1929, during his last year of the intermediate schooling (the equivalence of ninth grade in junior high school), Nguyễn Tuân was suspended because of his participation in a petition against a few French teachers, who demeaned Vietnamese people. Shortly after, he was imprisoned for illegally crossing the border of colonial French Indochina to Thailand. Upon his release, he started writing as a journalist and an author.
Nguyễn Tuân began his writings in the early 1930s, but only gained public recognition from 1938 with several essays and reports such as Vang Bóng Một Thời (Echo and Shadow Upon a Time), Một Chuyến Đi (A Trip), etc. In 1941, he was again imprisoned, this time for his communication with the political revolutionaries.
After the August Revolution in 1945, Nguyễn Tuân joined the Communist party and kept working as a writer. From 1948-1958, he held the position of Chief Secretary of Vietnamese Art & Literature Association. His works during this time feature mostly the scenery and cultural color of Vietnam, such as the collection of essays Sông Đà (River Đà) (1960), a diary from the Vietnam War (1965–1975), among others.
Nguyễn Tuân died in Hanoi in 1987, leaving his readers a collection of exceedingly creative and artistic work. In 1966 he was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Award for Art and Literature.
Read more about this topic: Nguyen Tuan
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