Dr. Elizabeth Collins, retired Professor of Classics & World Religions, co-edited the just-released book Viet Nam: Tradition and Change (Ohio University Press, 2016).
With her co-editor, Lady Borton, Collins published selected work of prolific Vietnamese writer Huu Ngoc.
“At age 98 by Western counting (99 according to Vietnamese), Huu Ngoc is among Viet Nam’s most famous general scholars,” writes Borton in “VN scholar publishes trusty culture guide” at Vietnamnet. “Born with limited eyesight, he reads by holding a text three inches from his near-sighted eye. Yet with his unusual linguistic ability, prodigious memory, and his longevity, he is among Viet Nam’s keenest observers of traditional Vietnamese culture and recent history. For 20 years, Huu Ngoc wrote a Sunday column in French for Le Courrier du Vietnam (The Viet Nam Mail). An English version appeared as “Traditional Miscellany” in Viet Nam News, the national English-language newspaper. He collected 1,255 pages from these essays into Wandering through Vietnamese Culture, the only English-language book to win Viet Nam’s Gold Book Prize.”
Viet Nam: Tradition and Change, Borton writes, “is a selection from the many treasures in Wandering through Vietnamese Culture.” Bolton’s column describes a man born in 1918, “when Viet Nam did not yet have its own name on world maps,” who became an English teacher after an exam on Wordsworth’s poem The Daffodils “changed my life,” who once edited a French contraband newspaper, and ran a multi-language publishing house.
“During the past 20 years, Hữu Ngọc’s lecture, ‘3,000 Years of Vietnamese History in One Hour,’ has entranced 20,000 foreign visitors to Việt Nam,” adds the Ohio University Press website.
Collins’ research specializations include religions of Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian intellectuals.
About the Book | Viet Nam: Tradition and Change
“During his twenty-year tenure as a columnist for Việt Nam News, Hà Nội’s English-language newspaper, Hữu Ngọc 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,” says the Ohio University Press website.
With extraordinary linguistic ability and a prodigious memory, Hữu Ngọc is among Việt 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 Hữu Ngọc’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 Việt Nam today.
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