From the highly controversial writer, reporter, and satirist Vũ Trọng Phụng, Making a Whore is an exposé of the so-called progressive ‘Westernised’ ideals of sexuality in 1930s colonial Vietnam.
by Vũ Trọng Phụng
Translated by Đinh Ngọc Mai
Edited by Dương Mạnh Hùng, Alina Martin and Samuel Tan
The novel follows the life of Huyền, a young woman born into Hà Nội’s upper-class, whose innocent interest in her mother’s pregnancy is casually dismissed: ‘You’ll find out when you get married’. Lacking sexual education from her family, Huyền turns to her peers for answers, opening up a world of childish whispers about physical pleasure.
As polite society demands Huyền to remain virtuous, she enters into adulthood with both the will to know and the will to suppress a young woman’s burning physical desires. The torments of her sexual frustration spiral Huyền into a life of debauchery; one she might not ever want to turn back from.
A poetic classic that has captivated readers for generations is given a new life in Nguyễn Bình’s translation.
by Nguyễn Du
Translated by Nguyễn Bình
The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du is a timeless poetic masterpiece, revered as one of the greatest classics in Vietnamese literature. Through Thuý Kiều’s years of wandering as a woman in 16th-century China, the epic delves into the complexities of human nature, gender, and sexuality.
With a new translation that is attentive to the folksy rhythms of the original form, and complete with detailed notes that position the original in its cultural context—The Tale of Kiều will appeal to lovers of a rich story, its couplets lingering and speaking to the most intimate of our human emotions.
After an eight-year long hiatus, Nguyễn Ngọc Tư comes back with her second novel. Mesmerising, poignant, lyrical, existential, yet claustrophobic, Water: A Chronicle encapsulates the beauty of what contemporary Vietnamese writing has to offer.
by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư
Translated by Nguyễn An Lý
Edited by Deborah Smith
Winner of the PEN Translates Award 2024
At the heart of this watery ‘chronicle’ is a dual mystery: a holy man on an island empire, and a desperate mother seeking his heart to cure her child. The mosaic novel of nine stories circles this enigma like the river’s currents, carrying with it fragments of myth and life from the great river.
A trans woman who wants to be ‘whole’, a shadow bride who wants to be fleshed, a mad woman with a colicky infant, a words-eating woman shielding her child from a fly apocalypse… The ghosts and ghouls that reflect upon the water surface may well be the everyday reality of river life, or simply the universal haunting of womanhood.
Major Books is an independent publishing company dedicated to bringing Vietnamese literature to the English-speaking world.
Our name, Major Books — devised by our brilliant friend Alina Martin — speaks as a clear, bold, and audacious resistance against the ‘minor’ status attributed to certain languages and their literature in the global publishing scene.
Our hope is to contribute, no matter how little, to growing awareness that there are no ‘lesser’ voices in world literature.
With the acute awareness of translation as an art form bearing immense potentials and challenges, our primary goal is to offer translations that are not only faithful but also true to the essence of the source book. Our translators, editors and illustrators, being mostly native speakers themselves, are committed to preserve the integrity and convey the originality of the author’s work.
We take immense pride in providing our authors, translators, and all stakeholders with fair and equitable compensation for their invaluable contributions, with the hope of fostering a thriving Vietnamese literature and creative ecosystems.
Between literary treasures that have been overlooked or worse, poorly translated, and brilliant pieces yet to be written, we will bring a curated selection of works from a variety of authors, periods, and genres. Ranging from critically acclaimed post-war fiction, national epic poetry, to contemporary LGBTQIA+ writings, we hope to present a well-rounded portrait of Vietnam and our diverse voices.
ALINA MARTIN is a writer and journalist living in London. She has graduate and undergraduate degrees in comparative literature and critical translation form University College London and the University of Oxford.
Anh Thu (they/them) is a Hanoian working in the publishing and creative industry. They have engaged in a diverse array of experiences; they have their poetry and writings featured in diaCRITICS, Tiger Tea Zine, Koening Zine and Sledgehammer Lit. Their passion for publishing and community led them to co-found the youth arts magazine GENCONTROLZ. They worked part-time handselling independent books at Stanfords Bristol as well as community-organised press Moonfest and Draig Fest.
They aim to challenge and explore beyond their taught binary and given present, as they find it inadequate to fully represent them. Alongside their Sociology undergraduate studies, they partake in various activities that all work towards the empowerment and accessibility of diverse, subversive and liminal stories and lives, with the more specific ambition of working in translated and independent publishing in the future.
DEBORAH SMITH yearns to support and participate in literary cultures that are liberatory, not complicit in structures of violence. This desire informed her founding Tilted Axis Press and translating from Korean, but also subsequently quitting both. These days she is feeling her way tentatively, in the uneven rhythms and nonlinear trajectories of neurodivergent living. She is grateful for every opportunity to do this work relationally.
DƯƠNG MẠNH HÙNG is an independent art translator & writer. Hùng’s interest in the dynamics between literature, visual arts, and translation is informed by their close observation of global and Southeast Asian socio-political and ecological histories.
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