Hiên le Maboul

A simple, solitary young man from a coastal village is portrayed from childhood through military service, his mind slow and demeaned by others yet deeply attuned to the forest and sea. He earns a living cutting bamboo, experiences intense sensory communion with nature, and gradually retreats into fear and silence as night and memory stir anxieties. Recruited into a colonial corps, he confronts loneliness, terror of darkness, and recollections of childhood landscapes; the narrative traces his inward life through vivid landscape imagery and a quiet psychological unraveling.