Nguyễn Khắc Viện (5 February 1913 in Hương Sơn – 10 May 1997) was a Vietnamese historian, literary critic, sometime dissident, and advocate of a Vietnamese health exercise dưỡng sinh similar to

yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

. Viện was a member of the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (, , PCF) is a Communism, communist list of political parties in France, party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its Member of the European Parliament, MEPs sit with The Left in the ...

formerly in charge of external propaganda and statements to foreign press. However his circulating of criticism of the government in the 1980s led to a ban on his writings till the early 1990s.''Human Rights Watch World Report'' 1992 - Page 475 Human Rights Watch (Organization), Human Rights Watch "General Secretary Do Muoi met with numerous groups to assure them that the party welcomes divergent ideas, and the ban on writings by Phan Dinh Dieu and Nguyen Khac Vien was said to have been lifted. However, the government ..."

Life

Khắc Viện first came to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France, in 1937, a time when the capital was a hotbed for anti-imperialist political exiles. He would stay in the country for twenty years, wherein he pursued an advanced degree in medicine, became a doctor and a writer. He became a member of the

in 1947, two years after Ho Chi Minh's declaration of Vietnamese independence. and worked on propaganda, campaigns, and discussions for Vietnamese national liberation with both French intellectuals and Vietnamese soldiers in the

French army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (, , ), is the principal Army, land warfare force of France, and the largest component of the French Armed Forces; it is responsible to the Government of France, alongside the French Navy, Fren ...

. Khắc Viện was a prominent voice for Vietnamese national liberation since 1953 until his expulsion to Vietnam in 1963. He became the editor of the French journals ''Études Vietnamiennes'' (Vietnamese Studies) and the ''Courrier du Vietnam'' (Vietnamese Courier). Under the pseudonym Nguyen Nghe, he wrote a prominent critique of the book '' Wretched of the Earth'' by fellow anti-colonialist Franz Fanon, in the essay "Frantz Fanon and the Problems of Independence." He married Nguyen Thi Nhat in 1966, and they had one adopted daughter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nguyen, Khac Vien Vietnamese writers 1913 births 1997 deaths People from Hà Tĩnh province