Cover Photo

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asian writer, book, book cover, books, fiction, Hue, library, novel, photography, Thiệu Trị, Vietnam, village teacher

My niece, MT, graciously allowed me to use one of the photos she took in 2007 during a visit to Huế. Here’s how it looks for the Kindle version of the book, and the cover for the print version is almost the same:

I had no idea where she had taken the shot, until a friend of mine, NVH, sent me the following photo which he said was taken at Emperor Thiệu Trị’s library. Note the mandarin statue on the left side of the photo.

Finally, today he sent me another photo to put everything in perspective. You can barely see it, but look at the left corner of the lower roof.

The Dictionary

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annamite, asian writer, book, books, dictionary, French, grammaire, neihtn, Vietnamese, village teacher

In Village Teacher, during his trial, our hero mentioned a Vietnamese-French Dictionary. This refers to an actual book titled Grammaire Annamite suivie d’un Vocabulaire Français-Annamite et Annamite-Français published by Louis Gabriel Galdéric Aubaret, the French Consul in Bagkok, Thailand, in 1861. You can view it in scanned form, courtesy of the late Professor Nguyễn Khắc Kham at the following link:

http://www.viethoc.org/eholdings/NgKhacKham/G_Aubaret_Annamite-Francais.pdf.