The Song of Kieu

A stunning new translation of the legendary Vietnamese epic poem, now for the first time in Penguin Classics

Considered the greatest literary achievement in Vietnamese, The Song of Kieu 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 life involves jealous wives, slavery, war, poverty, and time as a nun. Adapted from a seventeenth-century Chinese novel, Jin Yun Qiao, written by an unknown writer under the pseudonym Qingxin Cairen, author Nguyen Du upended the plot’s traditional love story by conveying the social and political upheavals at the end of the 18th century in Vietnam.

About the Contributors

Nguyen Du (January 3, 1765-September 16, 1820) is a celebrated Vietnamese poet who wrote in chu nom, the ancient writing script of Vietnam. He is most known for writing the epic poem The Song of Kieu.

Timothy Allen currently teaches English at the University of Liverpool. He has published translations from several languages, including Spanish and Vietnamese. In 2008, he won a Stephen Spender prize for his translation of the opening lines of the great Vietnamese verse-novel, Kieu: A New Lament for a Broken Heart by Nguyen Du, and was later awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship which enabled him to complete his reworking of the whole poem.