Vu Trong Phung

Who was Vu Trong Phung?

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

Vũ Trọng Phụng'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 7 months old resulted in Vũ Trụng Phụng's being brought up mainly by his mother. After finishing primary school, sixteen-year-old Vũ Trọng Phụng was forced to stop schooling and earn his own livings.

During the late-colonial decade of the 1930s Vũ Trọng Phụng produced a body of writing that stands today as the single most remarkable individual achievement in modern Vietnamese literature.