Vũ Trọng Phụng

Vũ Trọng Phụng (Hanoi, 20 October 1912 – Hanoi, 13 October 1939) was a popular Vietnamese author and journalist, who is considered to be one of the most influential figures of 20th century Vietnamese literature. Today, several of his works are taught in Vietnamese schools.

's ancestral village was Hảo village, Mỹ Hào District, Hưng 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 's being brought up mainly by his mother. After finishing primary school, 16-year-old 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.

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 ('''Set off with crutches''') on the newspaper 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'' () and ''The Storm'' (), became part of Vietnamese literature textbooks.

Famous for the satire in his works, 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" (). Later on, his works were prohibited from being published or read in North Vietnam because they were deemed "obscene publications" until the late 1980s.

Provided by Wikipedia