Echoing Whispers: Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales

Image: ‘Gái Ngoan Dạy Chồng – Đoàn Tụ‘ (‘A Wise Wife’s Teaching of Her Idiotic Husband – Homecoming’), Jeet Zdũng

Our new summer display from Major Books features a series of Vietnamese lacquer paintings that shimmer with stories of heritage, magic and belief.

The display presents 50 Vietnamese lacquer paintings rooted in folk tales of Vietnam.

Moving between themes of home and imagination, the works weave folklore and memory across generations. It invites visitors into a richly layered world where the everyday meets the mystical, and where storytelling becomes a shared, living connection to past and present.

The display is free to visit in The Hive during the Museum’s opening hours. A creative programme of talks and workshops runs alongside the display in June and July. Explore some of the events below, and keep an eye out for new programmes added through July.

About Major Books

Major Books is an independent publishing company dedicated to bringing Vietnamese literature to the English-speaking world.

With the acute awareness of translation as an art form bearing immense potentials and challenges, our primary goal is to offer translations that are not only faithful but also true to the essence of the source book. Our translators, editors and illustrators, being mostly native speakers themselves, are committed to preserve the integrity and convey the originality of the author’s work.

We take immense pride in providing our authors, translators, and all stakeholders with fair and equitable compensation for their invaluable contributions, with the hope of fostering a thriving Vietnamese literature and creative ecosystems.