A Tale For 2000 (A Personal Glimpse Of The Vietnamese Gulag - English Version) ( Hard Cover) (Chuyện Kể Năm 2000 - Bia Cứng)

"Over a score of years had passed since the day he was released from prison.
The narrator found it hard to address him properly, to refer to him in the third person. Should he be called in the agedeferring way as"Mr"? Addressing a prisoner with that formal term did seem to be inappropriate. Moreover, perhaps the readers had got used to the plain "he" and "him" in part one of this account.
There was another reason: it was difficult to ascertain his age. Some said that he was fifty. Others said sixty. Yet others, looking at his gray hair and srinkled face, would be no less adamant that he could not be a day under sixty-five.
Thus he was agless, very much like Mr Lan had been.
Just call him a plain "him." It did not matter much to him. He was not offended. But he did not like his age being guessed as sixty-five. He was sad. Sad with the thought that he would soon leave this world." (Truyện Kể Năm 2000)