According to Nguyen Hai Nam, Chairman of the Nguyen Tien Dien family council, The Tale of Kieu – Tien Dien Edition is a version published under the auspices of the Nguyen Tien Dien family council, with the compilation carried out by a group of Kieu scholars devoted to Nguyen Du and The Tale of Kieu. They worked in a rigorous, scientific manner, selectively inheriting the finest achievements of researchers over the past 200 years, and drawing from existing Nom and Quoc ngu versions to compile a text that is closest to Nguyen Du’s original spirit in an effort to meet the needs of readers and researchers.
This edition of The Tale of Kieu is divided into sections and annotated in a highly systematic and accessible manner, featuring illustrations by renowned painters.
This is a special limited edition published to mark the 260th anniversary of the birth and the 205th commemoration of the passing of the world cultural figure and great poet Nguyen Du, the 225th anniversary of the creation of The Tale of Kieu and the 150th anniversary of its transliteration into the Vietnamese romanised script (Quoc ngu).
According to the compilation team, The Tale of Kieu – Tien Dien Edition is based on the corrected versions produced by scholars over the past 200 years. These works represent valuable achievements in promoting The Tale of Kieu and bringing it to all levels of society.
Since the 1866 Kieu Nôm edition and the 1875 romanised edition transcribed by Truong Vinh Ky, more than 150 years have passed, revealing a continuous current of editing and compilation. Within this process, there have been creative contributions — new words and expressions that have been embraced and become familiar to today’s readers — forming what may be considered a phenomenon of “co-creation” of The Tale of Kieu.
As such, the compilation team agreed that their task was to select the finest elements from the published editions of Kieu, while endeavouring to remove details that previous editors had altered or added in ways deemed inappropriate; at the same time, they sought to acknowledge the contributions and creative innovations that have become widely accepted.
