The Song of Kieu - A New Lament

"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 Thuy 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 becomes a nun twice. There are high points, such as when she teams up with a 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.'

Product details

• Authors: Timothy Allen, Nguyen Du, Du Nguyen
• Assisted by: Timothy Allen (Translation)
• Publisher: Penguin Books Uk
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 30.04.2019
• EAN: 9780241360668
• ISBN: 978-0-241-36066-8
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 127 mm x 197 mm x 14 mm
• Series: Penguin Classics; Penguin Classics
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; Vietnam, FICTION / Classics, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), POETRY / Epic, Poetry by individual poets, Classic fiction, Epic, vietnam; china; classic