Women in Vietnamese Literature Trilogy

Three women, three centuries, three stories: a trilogy by and about Vietnamese women. Each book offers a distinct portrait of Vietnamese womanhood. Together, they show how, across centuries, Vietnamese women have embodied the tensions between agency and obedience, silence and speech, survival and sacrifice.

Water: A Chronicle (PEN Translates Award 2024)

After an eight-year hiatus, Nguyễn Ngọc Tư returns with her second novel. Mesmerizing, poignant, lyrical, and existential, yet claustrophobic, Water: A Chronicle encapsulates the beauty of contemporary Vietnamese writing. 

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. This mosaic novel, composed of nine stories, circles this enigma like river currents, carrying fragments of myth and life from the great river.

A trans woman who longs to be whole, a shadow bride yearning for flesh, a madwoman with a colicky infant, and a woman who eats words to protect her child from a fly apocalypse… The ghosts and ghouls reflecting on the water’s surface may be the everyday reality of river life—or the universal haunting of womanhood.

Making a Whore

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.

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.

The Tale of Kiều

A poetic classic that has captivated readers for generations is given a new life in Nguyễn Bình’s translation.

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.