Nguyen Du

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The Song of Kieu

'Tim Allen's new translation of THE SONG OF KIEU is lively and absorbing. It reinvigorates a classic and wonderfully conveys the romance, adventure, tragedy, and wisdom of the poem that all Vietnamese know.'

'Tim Allen has done what most literary translators can only aspire to do. He has secured a place for a major foreign work in the stock of his mother tongue.'

'Timothy Allen's supple and imaginative translation has re-energised Nguyên Du's lyricism in meticulous free verse that evokes the five senses'

'For elegance and sheer readability I doubt if it could be equalled. English readers already familiar with Kieu will be delighted by its musicality. And those who have not previously encountered Kieu will wonder how such a masterpiece could so long have eluded them.'

'Timothy Allen's translation of the Vietnamese epic The Song of Kieu is magnificent. [In language] capable of exquisitely beautiful love scenes, throat-catchingly eloquent nature passages and moments of humour, he renders an obscure masterpiece into a strikingly contemporary one.'

A New Lament

Ever since it exploded into Vietnam's cultural life two centuries ago, The Song of Kieu has been one of that nation's most beloved and defining central myths. It recounts the tragic fate of the beautiful singer and poet Kieu, who agrees to marry to save her family from debt but is tricked into working in a brothel. Over the course of a swift-moving story involving kidnap, war, jealous wives and rebel heroes, she will become a queen, wife, nun, slave, victim and avenger, surviving through the strength of her words and her wits alone. 
 
Translated with an introduction by Timothy Allen

Nguyen Du (1766-1820) was born into turbulent times. His mother (a singer-songwriter) and his father (a poet, historian and senior figure in the Lê dynasty that had ruled Vietnam for centuries) died before he reached his teens; the Lê dynasty itself was overthrown in 1789 by a peasant uprising. When that uprising was in turn crushed (1802), Nguyen Du reluctantly accepted a diplomatic post in what would become Vietnam's final dynasty. Outwardly respectful to his new masters, he wroteThe Song of Kieu secretly, as an act of private rebellion. It remains perhaps the greatest masterpiece of Vietnamese literature.

This manuscript is ancient, priceless, 
bamboo-rolled, perfumed with musty spices. 
Sit comfortably by this good light, that you may learn 
the hard-won lesson that these characters contain.' 
 
The Song of Kieu is the greatest classic of Vietnamese literature. It tells the story of the beautiful Vuong Thúy Kieu, who agrees to a financially profitable marriage in order to save her family from ruinous debts, but is tricked into working in a brothel. Her tragic career involves jealous wives, slavery, war, poverty and she also becomes a nun twice. There are high points, such as when she teams up with muscle-bound, tender-hearted rebel hero who makes her his queen and summons all her wrongdoers to account, but the ending is bittersweet. 
 
'To the Vietnamese people themselves, [it] is much more than just a glorious heirloom from their literary past,' says Professor Alexander Woodside of the University of British Columbia. 'It has become a kind of continuing emotional laboratory in which all the great and timeless issues of personal morality and political obligation are tested and resolved [. . .] Western readers who are curious about Vietnam and the Vietnamese may well gain more real wisdom from cultivating a discriminating appreciation of this one poem than they will from reading the entire library of scholarly and journalistic writings upon modern Vietnam which has accumulated in the West.'

The Song of Kieu

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Nguyen Du

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