Vietnam's "Bob Dylan" dies

The singer-songwriter described as Vietnam's Bob Dylan, Trinh Cong Son, has died in a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City from chronic diabetes at the age of sixty-two.

Trinh earned his widespread popularity by being detested both by the former American-backed government of South Vietnam and by the Communist authorities in the North during the war.

His songs however were mostly romantic, and many of Vietnam's new generation of singers say he was their main sources of inspiration. Trinh refused to leave Vietnam at the end of the war; instead he was sent to a re-education camp for four years, where he said that he spent his time planting rice amid the mine-fields.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service