Distinguished Ngo Bao Chau shares his feelings about books

Ngo Bao Chau

Photo: Tuoi Tre

Ngo Bao Chau, the winner of the world’s top mathematics prize Fields Medal two months ago, talks about his special friends -- books.

Because of my work, I move a lot. Each time, it takes a few months before the new house becomes familiar. And I’ve noticed, time and time again, the special moment when a new house suddenly becomes a home: it’s when I unpack my books from the boxes and I arrange them on the shelves. As the books are being lifted out of the boxes to fill the shelves, I feel my past also leaping out and filling up the present.

I have quite a lot of books. Some I’ve read once, some many times, and some only a few pages. But I always know when a book goes missing. And it bothers me when someone borrows my books and forgets to return them, even though I must admit that I myself sometimes commit the same offense.

Among my books, the ones that I hold closest to my heart are the old books that have been bent out of shape by time. Like the one that I carried with me to India. Its pages were soaked and curled up by moisture, and forever lost their original shape. Or the one I left for a month atop the wooden desk on the fourth floor of my parents’ house in Hanoi (that house is always filled with sunshine). The color on the cover of that book has faded. Watching books fade with the passing of time gives me the same feeling as watching my parents, relatives, and friends growing older with each passing day.

I never write or highlight the pages of my books, just as I never want to paint my friends’ faces with dirt.
Time and space put limits on our life in the sense that each of us can only live one life and be in one place at a particular time.

But pages of books serve as windows that open us to new lives and outer worlds. And just like windows, they also let the sun shine through and into our own lives.

Thus, we read not only to satisfy our desire to know about the universe and life but we also read to nurture our desire for knowledge. When we find the answer to a question through a book, it will naturally generate two other questions and such questions will lead us to new books.

Of course, we can’t find all answers in books because real life is so much larger than books. There are things that books can’t teach us because there are things we can’t fully understand until we’ve crashed and burnt with them. And there are also things that are better communicated through speaking than writing.

But on the other hand, we can learn from books more than we think because there is so much that we cannot express in spoken words. Human relationships hinge on certain rules: we should not make life harder for others by imposing on them our own torments as our daily life is already tiring.

When we speak, we are imposing because the act of speaking demands immediate attention of the listener at that very moment. When we write, however, we let our readers choose their own time to communicate with us. Expressed at wrong times, the most heartfelt message can become inappropriate and lost. Books, however, give us the great advantage of being always stable over time.

Books are special friends who always come to us with an open heart. When we move, these friends accompany us. Forever they wait for us, on the shelves.