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guojing 's review for:
I've seen this work be referred to as an epic poem online. It lacks most of the standard accoutrements of that style, but yet it still feels a fitting descriptor. If anything, it feels all the more pure for that.
The Penguin Classics version I just completed offered a read more pleasant than most. Lyrical, poetic, rich in allusions to Chinese culture, with lengthy notes to provide context to the Western reader. The story flows from one episode of Kieu's tribulations to the next with remarkable ease and I never felt lost, something hard enough to do with prose but very rare in the poetic (though not rhyming) style of this translation.
The one thing that I found somewhat saddening was the lack of Vietnamese culture. It is a Vietnamese classic, yet it relies mostly on Han Dynasty, and some later, references to create the cultural dynamic (culturescape?) of the epic. I should have liked to have learned more about Vietnam, but I'm never going to be put off from learning Chinese culture, so this wasn't too distracting.
The Penguin Classics version I just completed offered a read more pleasant than most. Lyrical, poetic, rich in allusions to Chinese culture, with lengthy notes to provide context to the Western reader. The story flows from one episode of Kieu's tribulations to the next with remarkable ease and I never felt lost, something hard enough to do with prose but very rare in the poetic (though not rhyming) style of this translation.
The one thing that I found somewhat saddening was the lack of Vietnamese culture. It is a Vietnamese classic, yet it relies mostly on Han Dynasty, and some later, references to create the cultural dynamic (culturescape?) of the epic. I should have liked to have learned more about Vietnam, but I'm never going to be put off from learning Chinese culture, so this wasn't too distracting.