In this volume, ‘Zen Master’ Nguyen Chí
Thien crafts seven stories in prose from his
experience at the Hanoi Central Prison—the
infamous Hanoi Hilton—where he spent six
of a total of twenty-seven years in the
Vietnamese gulag for the offense of writing
poetry against the Communist regime.

“Totalitarianism creates hell on earth.  In
Nguyen Chí Thien, that hell has found its
Dante.  Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories is a
tribute to the power of the human spirit over
tyranny and of art over oblivion.”  
Michael Lind, Senior Whitehead Fellow
 The New America Foundation

Dissident Vietnamese poet Nguyen Chí Thien
lecturing at a Master’s Tea. Berkeley College,
Yale University, in April 2005.  
(Photo by Jean Libby)                                         
Commemorative edition of the Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories
hardback, with dust jacket and graphic poetry insert
signed by the author       

                                                        The
Yale edition, in paperback