Nha Nam Books

Nhã Nam entered Vietnam's book market in February 2005 with an unlikely opener: a Vietnamese translation of Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The publisher's real breakthrough came soon after, when its edition of Đặng Thùy Trâm's wartime diary sold close to 500,000 copies, a record for Vietnamese publishing that pulled the company into the national conversation. Two decades on, Nhã Nam has built its catalogue on literary fiction in translation alongside a growing non-fiction list, holding Vietnamese-language rights to authors including the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Don Miguel Ruiz, Naomi Klein, and Elizabeth Gilbert, and working with international houses such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. Its titles have collected a run of national honors, from the Sách Hay literary prize to Vietnam's National Book Award and repeat wins at the Hanoi Writers' Association and Vietnam Writers' Association translation prizes. From its headquarters at 23-25 Chùa Láng in Hanoi's Đống Đa district, the company now runs its own bookstore network across the country alongside its publishing arm, putting Nhã Nam in the unusual position of controlling both what gets translated into Vietnamese and where readers buy it.