The 'Kim Van Kieu' of Nguyen Du (1765-1820)

The "Kim Van Kieu" of Nguyen Du, written in the early nineteenth century and commonly considered to be a defining masterpiece of Vietnamese literature, is the story of an educated and beautiful young woman who suffers misfortune and degradation before obtaining justice and peace. It is a long poem in a complex metric and rhyme scheme that is distinctively Vietnamese. Vladislav Zhukov here provides the first English-language translation, perfectly conveying the poetic form of the original work and thereby producing a literary creation in English that is equivalent to Nguyen Du's genius in Vietnamese—one that can be appreciated as poetry in English.