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.’ * Viet Thanh Nguyen *
‘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.’ – David Constantine
‘Timothy Allen’s supple and imaginative translation has re-energised Nguyên Du’s lyricism in meticulous free verse that evokes the five senses’ * The Poetry Review *
‘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.’

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 La dynasty that had ruled Vietnam for centuries) died before he reached his teens; the La 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 wrote The Song of Kieu secretly, as an act of private rebellion. It remains perhaps the greatest masterpiece of Vietnamese literature.

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