Nha Nam Publishing House in HCM City recently bought the rights to translate and publish Indian author Vikas Swarup’s Q&A, which will soon be released in bookstores under the title Slumdog Millionaire.

After local audiences responded enthusiastically to director Danny Boyle’s Oscar prize-winning movie of the same name, Nha Nam began final negotiations with its foreign counterparts to buy the copyright to the book.

The Q&A novel, on which the movie was based, is only one of many foreign works that are being translated and published locally, largely due to greater demand among younger readers.

Several local publishers, citing an increasing number of requests from the reading public, have announced they will translate and publish the books of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature.

International copyrights

Such interest by publishers has risen since 2004, when Viet Nam became a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

After Viet Nam signed the international agreement, local publishers began to find it easier to negotiate with foreign publishers.

Many State-owned and private publishers, such as Ky Thu, Phuong Nam and Tre (Youth), have recently been negotiating with foreign partners to purchase the copyright for books by well-known authors from China, Japan, France and the US.

“Foreign books are very high sellers,” said Nguyen Thuy Quynh, who works in a bookshop run by State-owned Fahasa Company in HCM City’s District 1.

“Vietnamese like to read translated versions of literary works and comic books,” she added.

Quynh said most buyers of Fahasa’s products were students and children, while most customers at Phuong Nam and Nha Nam were lovers of serious literature.The increasing availability of foreign literary titles has encouraged young Vietnamese writers to discover new writing styles.

Novels by young writers Tran Nha Thuy and Nguyen Dieu Linh have been all the rage this year.

Thuy’s Su Tro Lai Cua Vet Xuoc (The Return of Scratching) and Linh’s Trai Hoa Do (The Camp of Red Flowers), for example, are mystery stories featuring the supernatural.

Written in a simple and engaging style, both of the books have struck a chord among young readers in urban areas.

Many readers have noticed that Thuy and Linh have been influenced by the style of internationally acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who has been popular for decades but whose books have only been recently recognised among Vietnamese youth.

Female writers

Other bestsellers include Oxford Thuong Yeu (Beloved Oxford) by Duong Thuy and Chuyen Tinh New York (Love Stories in New York) by Ha Kin, both written by female writers who have travelled and studied overseas.

Within the first two months of its release in 2007, more than 7,500 copies of Oxford Thuong Yeu, a romance between a young Vietnamese woman and a British man living in England, were sold.

“I like the books by young writers like Thuy and Kin because their pages are full of their dreams, pains and hopes,” young reader Huynh Thu Thao said.

“Young readers prefer to read rule-breaking styles,” she added.

VietNamNet/VNS