The Book, the Sojourner, and the Bridge
A book, a way of living abroad, and a bridge: in Vietnamese, all three share the sound *kiều*. A coincidence of language, and an echo that runs through how we read the poem.
Context
Background on Truyện Kiều, its history and translations
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The German Translation by Irene and Franz Faber
Inspired by Hồ Chí Minh’s gift of Truyện Kiều, Franz and Irene Faber spent seven and a half years translating Nguyễn Du’s epic into German. Their Das Mädchen Kiều became a milestone of Vietnamese-German literary exchange, first published in East Germany in 1964 and reissued in 2015 as a bilingual edition. In 1954, German journalist…
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The Tale of Kiều – in Short
Written by Nguyễn Du around 1805, The Tale of Kiều is a cornerstone of Vietnamese literature.
