What Is Vạn Sắc Hư Vô?
Published in Vietnam in 2022 by Tao Đàn in collaboration with the Vietnam Writers’s Association Publishing House, Vạn sắc hư vô (provisionally translated as A Thousand Shades of Nothingness) is Nguyễn Khắc Ngân Vi’s third novel, following Đàn bà hư ảo (provisionally translated as Women of Illusion) and Phúc âm cho một người (provisionally translated as The Gospel for One). According to the National Library of Vietnam’s bibliographic records, the 2022 edition is 329 pages long and had a print run of 1,000 copies.
Yet the novel is difficult to reduce to labels such as “contemporary fiction”, “experimental fiction” or “psychological fiction”.
The story follows Nhàn, a woman who teaches Chinese, and Chỉ Kỳ, a young woman who becomes her student. Through their relationship, the novel explores desire, love, possession, and the conflicts between the different selves within a person. Critical writing on the novel has often highlighted Ngân Vi's cold, sharp, and daring prose, while also noting that it is not an easy book to read.
In other words, Vạn sắc hư vô was not written as a cultural postcard from Vietnam to the rest of the world. It does not present Vietnam as a landscape, a collection of culinary traditions, a historical narrative, or a cultural heritage that foreign readers can easily recognize. Instead, the novel turns its attention to people living with loneliness, desire, uncertainty, and the quiet struggles of ordinary life.
Before The Book Reached China
In Vietnam, Vạn sắc hư vô was not a bestseller in the conventional sense. There are no publicly available figures for its total sales or commercial performance that would allow such a claim to be made with confidence. Today, however, the novel is sold out across major online book platforms in Vietnam, suggesting that interest in the book has persisted well beyond its initial publication.
What can be observed, however, is the critical life the novel developed after publication. Discussions of the book have focused on psychological structures, the fragmentation of the self, desire, sexuality, and the sense of disorientation experienced by its urban characters.
Perhaps one of the most interesting signs that the novel had moved beyond the boundaries of a book meant simply to be read appeared not in a bookstore, but somewhere entirely different: an examination room. A sentence from Vạn sắc hư vô, “The spirit of the times is something in which human beings are both present and absent” (provisionally translated by writer) was included in a literature examination for final year high school students in Shanghai, China.
This creates an intriguing paradox in the novel’s journey. Vạn sắc hư vô had already entered China's cultural life before its official Chinese edition was published. In a sense, the literature crossed the border before the book itself had completed its journey out of the country.
And Then A Vietnamese Novel Arrived In Shanghai
On August 10, 2026, Vạn sắc hư vô by Nguyễn Khắc Ngân Vi was officially released in China. The Chinese edition was published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House after the publisher acquired the rights to the novel.
At first glance, this might seem like an ordinary publishing story: a Vietnamese novel is translated into Chinese and released in another country. But the journey of Vạn sắc hư vô quickly reveals that this is about more than translation.
The novel was reprinted on its first day of publication. By the end of August 2026, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House said that Vạn sắc hư vô was its best selling publishing project of the year. The book also travelled across seven Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Haikou, Xiamen, and Guangzhou, where Ngân Vi met readers, writers, and scholars.
What makes this particularly interesting is that Vạn sắc hư vô did not enter China as an official cultural product intended to represent an entire nation. It entered a new literary market through stories that are deeply personal: the sorrows, reflections, anxieties, and quiet struggles of ordinary people, and the seemingly small stories of their lives that nevertheless touch on experiences that can be understood far beyond any single culture.
According to Ngân Vi, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House first became aware of her through the Shanghai Writing Program, a residency program for international writers. The publisher had initially approached a Japanese writer, but after hearing Ngân Vi speak about her work, their interest shifted towards her.
Her experience points to another possible route for Vietnamese literature across borders. A work does not always have to begin by presenting itself as a grand representative of Vietnamese literature. Sometimes, it simply needs to find another reader, another literary ecosystem, and another group of people with whom its stories can resonate across thousands of kilometres and across languages.
On Douban, a major Chinese platform for reviewing books and other cultural works, Vạn sắc hư vô received a rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 143 users at the time of the article’s publication. Ngân Vi observed that Chinese readers responded to the novel in ways similar to Vietnamese readers: some strongly connected with it, while others found it difficult to understand.
During her events in China, some readers were particularly interested in the relationship between the body and politics. Some saw the female bodies in the novel as representing more than sexuality. More significantly, in several of the seven cities she visited, readers told Ngân Vi that this was their first encounter with Vietnamese literature.
Here, Vạn sắc hư vô begins to occupy two positions at once.
It is a Vietnamese novel. But at the same time, it is simply a novel.
And the tension between these two identities leads to a larger question.
When A Vietnamese Novel Goes Global, Is It Expected To Tell A Vietnamese Story?
When a work comes from a major literary tradition, it is often allowed to simply be literature. An American writer can write about a failed relationship in New York without being asked how the novel represents the United States. A French writer can write about a lonely man in a Paris apartment without having to carry the responsibility of explaining France to the rest of the world. For literary traditions that have been translated and circulated less widely, however, the situation can be different.
When a Vietnamese novel is translated into Chinese, English, or another language, it does not simply encounter a new readership. It also enters a system in which “Vietnam” can become part of how the work is introduced, marketed, and read.
A writer from a less internationally visible literary tradition may be asked about their country before being asked about their sentences. A work can be read as literature. But it can also be read as a “postcard from Vietnam”.
That is where the burden of representation begins.
In the case of Vạn sắc hư vô, one detail is particularly revealing: Ngân Vi has said that she did not write the novel for a specific audience. “I write novels because I see a story that I believe needs to be told,” she told Tuổi Trẻ. The statement may sound simple, but it becomes more significant when placed within the novel's journey across languages.
Once a book moves into another language, things that may feel instinctive or immediately recognizable to Vietnamese readers can suddenly require explanation. Ngân Vi has said that one of the greatest challenges in translation lies not only in language but also in the culture behind the text. A sentence may contain implicit knowledge of history, geography, psychology, and everyday life that readers from the same cultural background understand without explanation. Once translated, those layers of meaning can no longer be taken for granted. For this reason, Ngân Vi was directly involved in proofreading the Chinese edition, particularly its notes and explanations of references related to Vietnamese history, geography, and psychology.
On the one hand, a work does not necessarily have to represent Vietnam. On the other, precisely because it comes from Vietnam, it cannot entirely escape being read as part of Vietnam.
The Trap Of Identity
When a literary tradition has relatively few works circulating internationally, a successful book can easily be given a responsibility much larger than itself. It can become evidence that “Vietnamese literature can do this too.”
But if we continually ask a work to explain where it comes from, we risk turning literature into a passport.
The writer must carry a nationality.
The characters must carry an identity.
The story must carry a cultural narrative.
And eventually, the work must prove that it is “Vietnamese enough” to be introduced as Vietnamese literature. Vạn sắc hư vô raises an interesting challenge to that expectation precisely because it does not fit neatly into it. Its characters speak Vietnamese. They inhabit spaces shaped by contemporary Vietnamese society. They carry memories and social structures rooted in that context. These experiences do not belong exclusively to any one country.
Perhaps this is why Chinese readers can approach the novel through interpretations that do not entirely overlap with those of Vietnamese readers. That is the moment when literature begins to acquire another life.
When “Identity” Becomes A Market Category
In the international publishing market, “Vietnamese literature” can function both as a cultural identity and as a category. It helps a work become recognizable. But it can also limit the ways in which that work is seen. A reader searching for “Vietnamese literature” may approach a book with certain expectations: war, colonial memory, family, tradition, rural life, cultural heritage, or social transformation.
These are legitimate subjects. They are important parts of Vietnamese literature.
But Vietnam is not limited to the stories the world has already learned to associate with it. A literary tradition can only fully enter the global conversation when it is allowed to appear in all its diversity. It can contain stories about history as well as stories about the body. It can hold collective memory alongside private loneliness. It can move between rural landscapes and urban rooms. It can carry tradition while also giving space to desires that do not need to be explained through tradition.
This suggests that a work can enter another culture without necessarily being read through the “Vietnamese key” handed to readers by its introducers.
Must A Vietnamese Writer Tell A Vietnamese Story?
Perhaps the answer is no.
Or, more precisely, a Vietnamese writer should be free to tell a Vietnamese story in any way they choose, including ways that do not resemble what others imagine Vietnam to be. This is worth considering as literature from less widely circulated languages begins to enter the international market.
And a Vietnamese work does not have to constantly prove that it is “Vietnamese” in order to deserve translation. Perhaps what matters more is allowing a work to carry what genuinely belongs to it: its language, memories, history, wounds, desires, and even the things that cannot be easily translated. Then, the readers on the other side of the language can decide what those things mean to them.
A book may begin its journey carrying the identity of the place where it was written. But perhaps it truly begins to travel when readers are allowed to find something of themselves inside it.