The contest is launched from April 28, 2023 to February 29, 2025. The organizing committee received 146 entries, including 134 valid entries from 133 authors.
After a serious, objective and responsible judging process, the Jury unanimously determined that this year's competition did not have a truly outstanding work worthy of receiving the First Prize. However, this does not reduce the value or significance of the contest; on the contrary, it further affirms the spirit of fairness, transparency and standards that the Jury and the Organizing Committee always uphold.
The Organizing Committee has decided to award 12 official prizes including: 3 Second prizes, 4 Third prizes and 5 Encouragement prizes, at the same time, awarded 1 Special Prize from the Jury and 11 Accompanying Prizes from the Organizing Committee, to recognize the contributions and commitment of the authors to the contest.
Of which, 3 novels won Second Prizes including: "Thuong ngan" - author: Vinh Quyen; "Vien Con Tot Duong" - author: Bui Viet Sy; "Phu Sa Thuong" - author: Nguyen Trong Tan.
2 of the 3 authors who won the highest prize of the contest were veteran writers of Lao Dong Newspaper, who have won many awards.
Writer Vinh Quyen - former Head of the Central and Central Highlands Office of Lao Dong Newspaper, born in 1951 in Hue. Before the novel "Thuong ngan" he was very famous for a series of international books. Of his 18 books, 3 novels and 1 short story were written in English. He is the author of the book Debris of Debris (2009) - a novel about the post-war Vietnam. The Vietnamese version of the work won the Second Prize in the 2011-2015 novel Contest of the Vietnam Writers' Association. In early 2023, he published the novel "Thousands" by Tre Publishing House in 2023.
Author Bui Viet Sy was born in 1946 and was former Head of the Sports Department of Lao Dong Newspaper. He is a member of the Vietnam Writers' Association, famous for his novels "The Man Who Brings the Road of the Whole Road", "The Swallow and the Stretch", "Fragile Happiness", "You and Two Women", "The First Love of a Rabies"... In 2024, he published the novel "The Stone Plaster" invested by the Ministry of National Defense and licensed by the Literature Publishing House.
The entries show remarkable diversity, from large-scale epic novels to extremely short stories with the spirit of "tiny self-identity". Some works exploit fanciful and magical elements but are still associated with life, some works are based on historical documents but still value fiction as the creativity of the writer.
On topics, about 40% of works are written about history, revolution and war; 55% reflect contemporary life; and about 5% exploit new topics such as ecology, fantasy, gender or artificial intelligence - demonstrating the possibility that the novel is getting closer to the breath of life.
The contest is meaningful as a new source of motivation, contributing to promoting the development of Vietnamese novels in the context of the country's literature changing strongly in the trend of global integration.
