There is a lot of documentation about Montagu and Cholmondeley’s Operation Mincemeat, and about Mr Lü’s re-creation of it, probably because both of them were so remarkable and so successful. I have now accumulated several hundred thousand words of testimony. In 1998, I accompanied a writer from the Ba Jin Literary Academy on a trip to Vietnam, where we visited the town Vĩ Phu came from, a small place in the Lạc Sơn district of northwestern Vietnam. What we heard and what we saw would easily amount to several hundred pages. It was after this field trip that I felt I had finally gathered enough information, and knew how to tell Vĩ Phu’s story. I had the time period, the place, the background, the main characters, the supporting cast, the ‘big’ story and the ‘small’ details. The only thing I had misgivings about was that so many people had already told Vĩ Phu’s story in so many different ways. If I was unable to find my own path in telling this tale – if I just regurgitated what had already been told – there would be no point to it all. So I wanted to use a new method to tell an old story. Eventually, I decided to tell it from the point of view of Vĩ Phu’s ghost. To tell the truth, the inspiration for approaching the story in this manner owes much to what Mr Lü had written beneath the photo of his corpse: ‘My name is Vĩ Phu. Please don’t call me Hồ Hải Dương.’

Let the ghost speak from the other world. Listen, for it comes from across the great divide …

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My name is Vĩ Phu.

Please let me say that again. My name is Vĩ Phu.