During his twenty-year tenure as a columnist for Viet Nam News, Ha Noi's English-language newspaper, Huu Ngoc charmed and invigorated an international readership hungry for straightforward but elegant entrees into understanding Vietnamese culture. The essays were originally collected in the massive Wandering through Vietnamese Culture. With Viet Nam: Tradition and Change, Ohio University Press presents a selection from these many treasures, which are perfectly suited to students of Vietnamese culture and travelers seeking an introduction to the country's rich history, culture, and daily life.
With extraordinary linguistic ability and a prodigious memory, Huu Ngoc is among Viet Nam's keenest observers of and writers about traditional Vietnamese culture and recent history. The author's central theme-that all tradition is change through acculturation-twines through each of the book's ten sections, which contain Huu Ngoc's ideas on Vietnamese religion, literature, history, exemplary figures, and more. Taken on its own, each brief essay is an engaging discussion of key elements of Vietnamese culture and the history of an issue confronting Viet Nam today.

During his 20 years as a columnist for Viet Nam News, Huu Ngoc both charmed and educated an international readership with his simple but elegant glimpses into Vietnamese culture. These selections from his column are perfectly suited to students of Vietnamese history and culture and travelers seeking an introduction to the country and its people.

About the Author
Huu Ngoc (1918-) is retired director of Viet Nam's foreign languages publishing house and editor of Vietnamese Studies, Ha Noi's semi-scholarly quarterly published since 1964. His Sunday newspaper columns remain reader favorites. During the past twenty years, Huu Ngoc's lecture, "3,000 Years of Vietnamese History in One Hour," has entranced 20,000 foreign visitors to Viet Nam.

Reviews
"Viet Nam offers a sweeping introduction to Vietnamese history and culture through a collection of essays selected from Wandering through Vietnamese Culture (2004 ... [It] moves from the ancient to the colonial to the contemporary, runs the cultural gamut from village puppetry to classical opera, and details cultural, linguistic, regional, and biographical histories. It both promotes and creates the idea of a national culture, which Huu Ngoc considers essential to Vietnam's past and future. Summing up: Essential." * CHOICE *
"Huu Ngoc is an engaging and brilliant writer, and the brevity of his vignettes are just enough to spark an interest in the topic for a reader unfamiliar with the material. Even scholars of Vietnam will find something to learn in this volume." * Pacific Affairs *


Awards
Winner of Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title 2018.



Book Information
ISBN 9780896803022
Author Huu Ngoc
Format Paperback
Page Count 386
Imprint Ohio University Press
Publisher Ohio University Press