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Chiếc Lược Ngà or The Ivory Comb is a short story written by a Vietnamese author Nguyễn Quang Sáng in 1966 during the Vietnam war. The story surrounds the characters ông Sáu and his daughter Thu having been separated from each other by the war and their reunion.

Summary
The ivory comb tells the story about fatherhood between a Vietnamese soldier, ông Sáu and his only daughter, Thu. Bác Bba, the narrator, is a close friend of ông Sáu. They are neighbors and partners who had left home together to fight in war. In 1946, their hometown had been occupied by the French, when Thu was just one year old, they were forced to leave their hometown to fight in war. The story is set on the day Ông Sáu returns to see his family for three days. His little daughter can’t recognize him because of the scar on his face and she resists, calling him “Ba” (“dad” in Vietnamese). Ông Sáu makes repeated attempts to get her to acknowledge him with tender gestures but his mischievous daughter still talks to him impolitely and rejects all of his help. Losing his temper, he shouts at her. Then Thu runs to her grandmother’s house nearby. She tells her grandmother that the man in the photo with her mom, told to be her father, didn’t have a scar on his face, so she doesn’t admit Ông Sáu as her father. Thu’s grandmother explains that the bullets in battle gave him a scar. On the day, Ông Sáu and Bác Ba are about to leave again, Thu finally calls him “Ba” and tells him to bring her a comb when he comes back. One day, when they are marching in the forest, Ông Sáu finds a flat piece of ivory and carves it into a comb. Unfortunately, in the battles with the Americans, ông Sáu dies of a bullet to his chest and gives the comb to Bác Ba. Many years later, Bác Ba coincidentally met Thu

Author
Nguyễn Quang Sáng (1932-2014) was a Vietnamese writer, novelist and editor known as Nguyễn Sáng. He was born on January 12th 1932 in Mỹ Luông town, Chợ Mới district, An Giang province, Southern Vietnam. In April 1946, he joined the army as a communicator and had worked in the Vietnamese military during the French colonial period and the Vietnam war. In 1950, he worked as a researcher of religion for the politic command of South-West Vietnam. From 1954, he moved to the North of Vietnam, worked in Radio The Voice of Vietnam (VOV) and started his writing career with Con Chim Vàng published in 1956.

Historical context
The author’s  life and works spanned  the French colonial period and the Vietnam war. The ivory comb was written during the time he worked in the South of Vietnam serving the Vietnamese Communist party. Sáng himself witnessed many tragedies in wartime and used those experiences as inspirations for his stories. In this time, many patriotic soldiers left their family to fight in war.