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Vietnam

The covers of the six books featured in the Watchlist in a 2x3 grid on a sand-colored background:...
The Watchlist: January 2025
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll kicks off 2025 with recommendations of six new titles in translation, from Japanese mystery-horror to Cuban prose poetry to a classic Vietnamese novel.
The covers of the six books featured in the Watchlist in a 2 x 3 grid: Clean, The Light That Burns...
The Watchlist: October 2024
By Tobias Carroll
Stuck in a reading slump? Check out Tobias Carroll’s recommendations of six new books of fiction, poetry, and graphic lit to read now, translated from Greek, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and more.
Sharpened pencils sit in a row.
Flickr
Kiêu
By Khuê Phạm
Let me begin this story with a confession: I don’t know how to pronounce my own name.
Translated by Daryl Lindsey & Charles Hawley
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist in a 2x3 grid: Mourning a Breast, Elevator in...
The Watchlist: July 2024
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll on six summer reads you won’t want to miss, from a detective thriller banned in Vietnam to a collection of speculative stories from Egypt.
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist in a 2x6 grid: Chronicles of a Village, The Mystery...
The Watchlist: April 2024
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll ranges far and wide in this month’s Watchlist, recommending a memoir by Palestinian writer Nasser Abu Srour, Astrid Roemer’s novel of mid-century Suriname, newly translated essays by Dubravka Ugrešic, and more.
The covers of the ten books featured in the list
Your 2024 International Women’s Day Reading List
By Alexander Aguayo
In honor of International Women's Day 2024, WWB recommends 10 forthcoming books written and translated by women, plus an honorable mention.
The covers of the nine books featured in the list: Suee and the Strange White Light, The House...
World Kid Lit Month: Read Around Asia
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Kelly Zhang & Hongyu Jasmine Zhu
This World Kid Lit Month, join us for a tour of Asia with the best of translated Asian literature for young people, including picture books, middle-grade and YA fiction, and graphic novels.
The twelve books featured in the list, in three rows of five
12 Translators Recommend Women in Translation
By Words Without Borders
For Women in Translation Month, a dozen translators recommend recent favorite books written and translated by women.
The book covers of Animals in Our Days, Brisbane, Flowers of Lhasa, Radio Siga, Linea Nigra, and...
The Watchlist: May/June 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books translated from Tibetan, Vietnamese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and Croatian.
A Note from Contest Judge David Tomas Martinez
It was an Hunahpúan effort to choose only four poems from this extraordinarily strong pool of poems.
Learning Late Letters
By Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên
The dead don't let us go, I say to my friend Sirius, putting my father's letters in a drawer.
Translated from Vietnamese by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
Presences, Ruins, Silences: Writing from Vietnam
By Nhã Thuyên & Kaitlin Rees
Silence, among Vietnamese authors, seems to have become a compelling tradition.
Translated from Vietnamese by the author
Multilingual
Endless Universe
By Bùi Ngọc Tấn
The passion and blind devotion are no longer. The ending is near.
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên
(Un)contextualizing Underground Poetry: Reimagining a Critical Community
By Nhã Thuyên
I don't want to put underground poetry into a concrete conflict with mainstream poetry.
Translated from Vietnamese by David Payne
A Chair on a Highway on a Rainy Afternoon
By P.K.
a chair standing by itself on a highway / means its life is over
Translated from Vietnamese by the author
Multilingual
The Sitting Woman
By Trần Thị NgH
I had just finished reading Francoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and he had imagined me as Odile from André Maurois’ Climats.
Translated from Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees
Fragments
By Pháp Hoan
Dissonant music lingers in the bodiless ear of the present tense
Translated from Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees
From “Crossroads and Lampposts”
By Trần Dần
He said it was politics disguised as debauchery.
Translated from Vietnamese by David Payne
A Dream
By Dương Nghiễm Mậu
Does he know I intend to murder him?
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên
Somewhere Better Than This Place Nowhere Better Than This Place
By Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên
We have found in the deterioration of flesh and bones a spiritual liberation
Translated from Vietnamese by the author
Multilingual
Nihilism
By Nhã Thuyên
I can’t stand that one the way someone with a chronic sinus infection can’t stand abnormal shifts in weather.
Translated from Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees
MultimediaMultilingual
Vi
By Kim Thuy
The realities of life in Indochina had nothing in common with those of France.
Translated from French by Sheila Fischman
Sage on the Mountain
By Đỗ Bích Thúy
She couldn’t bear living with any of her own sons or daughters.
Translated from Vietnamese by Charles Waugh & Nguyen Hung
From the Deep Earth
By Nguyen Phan Que Mai
Your gaze opens the sky. The sun rises and forgets to set.
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyen Phan Que Mai & Bruce Weigl
Freeing Myself
By Nguyen Phan Que Mai
The wind hands me a pair of wings and tells me to free myself from wings.
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyen Phan Que Mai & Bruce Weigl
From “Ru”
By Kim Thuy
I came into the world early in the Year of the Monkey, during the Tet Offensive
Translated from French by Nigel Spencer
Hai Phong
By Ngo Tu Lap
Yellow lamps, prostitutes' eyes / Lines of sad provincial poems
Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap
From behind a Closed Window
By Ngo Tu Lap
Is there, out there, a nothingness / With no future, and no past?
Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap
The Utopian
By Ngo Tu Lap
A sleepwalker with nothing to lose or gain
Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap
A Bullet Fired into the Night
By Ngo Tu Lap
No one knows he used to be a man
Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap