A collection of epic Vietnamese poems entitled Su Thi Con Chau Mon Man (Epics of Mon Man’s Offspring) has just hit the shelves.

Author Bui Viet Hoa spent six years putting it together. She immersed herself in the eclectic sources of epic poems and the country’s vast array of ethnic folk literature.

The book covers dong bao (compatriots) and the legends of ethnic tribes, said Hoa.

The book opens with the legend about the Vietnamese as descendents of dragons and the grandchildren of fairies. The book follows the adventures of the children and grand children. Even though they were from different regions, the children were always united in the struggle against a common enemy.

The 556-page book has over 16,500 verses and 47 traditional epic poems from Vietnam’s ethnic communities.

“While compiling the epic poems, I tried to translate the poems from different languages into Vietnamese without losing their original meaning,” Hoa said.

“I hope the book will present the richness of the country’s folk literature to the public, especially the young. The book represents a new approach. In the past, these poems were never written down.”

Hoa has shown great interest in epic poems over the last 20 years.

In 1986, when she was studying at Budapest University, she won a summer scholarship to study languages in Finland. At the end of the course, she translated the Finish epic Kalevala by Elias Lonnrot into Vietnamese. Her work came out in 1994 and she returned to the university in 1999 to write her doctoral thesis. Her thesis compared Kalevala to epic poems from Vietnam’s Muong ethnic group.

Her new book borrowed from Elias Lonnrot’s methods. Lonnrot combines poems with its subjects in an original way. As well as her role as a poem collector, Hoa assumed the role of artisan and narrator, using her imagination to weave the legends together.

“The folklore literature and oral epic poems from Vietnam are very rich. To write this book, I gathered epic poems from Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands), the Thai and Muong ethnic communities and other sources,” Hoa said.

“I also had to carefully select the legends and fairy tales of different Vietnamese ethnic groups,” she said.

Writer Markku Nieminen, President of Juminkeko Fund (which helped to publish the book) expressed his confidence that the book will be a hit in Vietnam and abroad. The book will be translated first into Finish.

Hoa put the book’s success down to the help of her husband, who teaches Vietnamese language and culture at Budapest University.

“My husband came with me to the hamlets and villages of ethnic groups and helped me a lot to understand their diverse languages. He even lived in the Central Highlands and Hoa Binh while we collected documents for the book,” Hoa said.

The Finish Embassy in Hanoi and the Juminkeko fund will soon donate 700 books to libraries across the country, and 300 books to the country’s universities.

The book costs VND269,000 and is on sale in major libraries in the country.