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.