"History of Vietnamese Script" won the Good Book Award 2024

Award winning booksNew discovery,One of seven categories of the award jointly organized by the Good Books Reading Promotion Project and the IRED Education Institute.

History of Vietnamese script(1615-1919) originated from the doctoral thesis of author Pham Thi Kieu Ly at Sorbonne Nouvelle University - Paris 3, in 2018. After successfully defending it, she continued to edit and supplement it, and the manuscript was then published by Les Indes Savantes Publishing House in 2022 in France. This year, Omega Books introduces the book to domestic readers through Thanh Thu's translation.

The book consists of six chapters with appendices and a table of proper nouns and place names, summarizing about 300 years of formation and development of the Vietnamese language. That is the process from when Portuguese and Italian Jesuit priests, in the first half of the 17th century, jointly created a language to communicate with the Vietnamese people, until King Khai Dinh ended the last Chinese examinations, and Vietnamese was accepted as the written language of modern Vietnam.

Dr. Kieu Ly spent many years researching and collecting new documents in archives in Rome (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal), Madrid and Ávilla (Spain) as well as working with leading experts in the field of language to do her doctoral thesis. She realized that the missionaries recorded Vietnamese in the Latin alphabet, which was part of the general trend of "missionary linguistics" in the 16th century. "Although it was part of a general trend, the fact that the national language became the official writing system of Vietnam under the influence of the political and social context is a special case in East Asia," the author commented.

Dr. Tran Quoc Anh, Santa Clara University, California, commented that this research work is "the most complete work ever" on the national language. The representative of the Good Book Award's jury said that the work is a remarkable and "very interesting" work, in the context of the domestic publishing industry lacking research books in many fields, especially the field of language.

In addition to the main work, Ms. Pham Thi Kieu Ly also made a shortened book version with the name100 questions about the history of Vietnamese scriptto make the topic more accessible to the general reader. Previously, in 2023, she summarized the research into a children's book calledJourney of creating national languagePublished by Kim Dong Publishing House. The author is currently teaching at the School of Interdisciplinary Sciences and Arts, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.

In addition to the New Discovery category, the prize is for literary works that attract readers' attention. Among them,Tho Tang Sun(Writers Association Publishing House, 2021) by author Dinh Phuong received a high consensus from the jury to receive the award for good books, with a new approach to the topic of history. Tho Tang is the hometown of the leader of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party - Nguyen Thai Hoc. The book was written based on the inspiration of national history with three highlights: The uprising initiated by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party at the Yen Bai execution ground in 1930, the movement to bring Jesus to the South in 1954 and the event of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime dragging the guillotine across the South in the 1960s.

According to Mr. Nguyen Chi Hoan, representative of the Writers Association Publishing House, historical novels have undergone strong and profound changes in recent years. Readers are no longer satisfied with the style of writing that recalls and recounts history with only pain and regret.Tho Tang Sunimpresses readers by discovering how history lives with human destiny, as memories and the past do not leave anyone throughout life.

The award ceremony took place on the morning of October 6 in Ho Chi Minh City, attracting more than 500 people, including experts in many fields and readers. In addition to the honoring and awarding, the event was also a place for people to exchange and express their thoughts on reading culture.

Educator Gian Tu Trung - member of the Award Council, head of the Organizing Committee - said: "Many people ask me whether books are still as important as before in the era of information and knowledge flooding the digital environment. I believe that, despite the abundance of information and knowledge, the fundamental knowledge and basic elite knowledge are still contained in books, especially good books and valuable books. As long as books are still valuable, reading encouragement will still be valuable in the new context."

This year, the Good Book Awards celebrate the 17th anniversary of the Reading Promotion Project - a non-profit cultural and educational activity, with the aim of contributing to improving people's knowledge and enlightening society through diverse book-related programs. Since 2007, the project has been a source of inspiration and initiation for domestic reading promotion movements such as: Vietnam Book Day, Books for Prisons, Books for Difficult Areas.