VietNamNet Bridge - Her name seldom crops up in literature debates, but Tran Thuy Mai said that it is her different writing style, gentle yet ardent, that has won the hearts of many in Vietnam and Japan.

Most of your short stories are about love, do you have any secret to make your works genuine? Did you base them on real life situations?

I have indeed been writing a lot about love and human love. But to me, every story is about love, which acts as a bridge to thinking about human destiny. In most of my stories, I describe images of people living in my world in the present and the past. When I write, I feel pity for my characters. Sometimes I feel I am living with them, sharing their pain and their happiness. Yes, I can say that their lives seem to be a part of mine.

Everybody says that my stories are plainly real. Most of my stories are drawn from the lives of my friends; each of them is a window that helps me understand life better. If a writer is not able to penetrate into the emotions and lives of other people around us, her stories will be boring, with similar scenes and emotions. And boring is the thing that I am most afraid of in my life.

The characters in a story and people in real life are somehow connected. The writer must apply pieces of their own lives or from other people with imagination to build up characters in their work. But the important thing is how to raise a message behind the story. I am very happy when some readers call me when they have some trouble in their lives because they know that I understand and sympathise with them.

Beside your popular works like Thap Tu Hoa (Cross of flowers), Gio Thien Duong (Wind from the Heaven), and Trang Noi Day Gieng (Moon at the Bottom of the Well), which have been made into movies, do you have any other stories that have been screened on television? Are you afraid of your works being deformed when they are converted into films?

Some of my stories, like Thuong Nho Hoang Lan (Fragile Nature), which has been developed into a screenplay by Pham Hong Hai and others (like) Eva Dai Dot (Eva in the Garden), and Nguoi Ban Linh Hon (Soul Seller) have been prepared but they haven’t been approved.

Of course, any director would love to leave some impression in their works so I am not surprised to see that films are somehow different from my original stories. A director is also a reader who loves my work, which is why he chooses them for his own. This moves me. A short story is a seed, which will grow and blossom. It depends on directors and the performance of actors and actress.

Every body knows that when a story is transformed into film, it changes a lot but I hope the spirit of the story is respected. If the stories are my children, I must see the films made from them as my grandchildren!

Can you explain why so many of your stories are chosen by film producers?

Maybe it is the time for us, that we are writing for readers who live in peace. Because this is the time for people to return to familiar topics like love, human love and human fate. Furthermore, I feel that, living amidst the hustle and bustle of life, people need their souls sincerely stirred by romance as a balm against the “industrialisation” of the soul.

Besides the topic of love, many of your stories are written about history. Are you acquainted with Vietnamese history?

I love reading history. I feel moved and am much inspired when reading books about the Nguyen Dynasty despite the compact and dry literary style of historians. The stories are like a fossil from which a vivid life in royal palaces rises in my mind. Of course my stories are fictitious but against the background of history. I don’t want to write about history, but to recall tragedies of the thirst for power under the feudal regime.

But my stories about history also focus on my central theme, love and human destiny. My characters here are princesses, imperial concubines of the Nguyen Dynasty.

You actually love Japan, many of your works write about the country and its culture. Are your works popular there?

I am lucky to have had the opportunity to visit Japan during the cherry blossom season. Japan and its culture are familiar to Vietnamese people. However the image of Tokyo in the cherry-blossom season made a deep impression on me. I admire the Japanese style of working, serious and strict, but I wonder about Japanese discipline – there were no couples kissing in public but they have the freedom to write freely about sex.

Men and women are equal at work but in family, Japanese women must comply and take care of their husbands. As a woman myself, my identification with the Japanese women and their lives find empathetic expression in some of my stories.

Two of my stories, Chiec Quat May (The Fan) and Gio Thien Duong (Wind From The Heaven), have been translated into Japanese by Kato Sarkae and were published in Japanese newspapers in late 2006.

Could you share some of your thoughts about literary compositions by young writers, especially female writers in Viet Nam?

I regconise two trends in current Vietnamese literature. Young writers love to use innovative forms and describe much about modern lifestyles in their work. This shows that they want to describe aspects of the new lifestyle in a modern society.

Senior writers in contrast follow a traditional style, writing about historical facts which have been ignored in the past. For me, the two trends are positive signs for Vietnamese literature although not many interesting stories have been written. However, I believe the two trends will lead to valuable works in Vietnamese literature in the coming years.

Most of your stories have a gentle flow and are written in a traditional style, do you think your works can match the new audacious writing style used by most young writers?

It is unfair to say that I feel allergic to other writing styles when I follow my tradition. I have read works of many different writers and enjoy many genres but I am always myself when I write. Literature should be varied and every writer has the right to choose their own writing style. In the past years, many authours have been affected by the western writing style, applying new manners to their works like Duong Nghiem Mau, Thanh Tam Tuyen. Meanwhile many are faithful to the traditional style like Binh Nguyen Loc, Vu Hanh and Duyen Anh.

Most of them are successful and have their readers. In my opinion, a writer should not imitate any one, because she can only win readers’ hearts with her own voice.

(Tran Thuy Mai, from Hue city, is a leading female writer in Viet Nam. More than 30 years ago, at the age of 22, Mai’s first story Bai Tho Ve Bien Khoi (Poem on Sea) was published in the Van Nghe Newspaper. Before she became editor of the Thuan Hoa Publishing House, she used to be a lecturer at the Hue Pedagogy University. Her first short story collection was published in 1983, and 25 years later, her 12th book, Mot Minh O Tokyo (Being alone in Tokyo), has just been published. Mai has stuck to her gentle, simple but profound writing style. Mai has been awarded many prizes by the Viet Nam Literature Association. Several of her works have been transformed into films. Many of her works have been introduced and published in foreign countries including Japan and the US. Her popular story Gio Thien Duong proved popular in both countries.)

(Source: VNS)