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Unlike so many other Vietnam veterans who deal with the war primarily through the eyes of American combatants, Robert Olen Butler, an Army translator in Saigon in 1971, has opted to create a much wider spectrum of plot considerations and characters in "The Deep Green Sea" (Henry Holt, $23) to populate his fictive world. "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain," for instance, was a collection of 15 stories told in the voices of Vietnamese refuges, seven of …

…fortunes have changed dramatically, with renewed interested demonstrated in his earlier books, which are in print in paperback editions. "All fiction comes out of yearning, and a lot of modern fiction fails because that is not in place," Butler said. "My work involves the yearning for self and identity, and to connect with others. These elements, as it happens, are compatible with the personalities and the culture and the situations that I found in Vietnam."