Nobel Prize-winning writer Grazia Deledda's work is translated into Vietnamese for the first time.

(HNMO) - Within the framework of “European Literature Days 2023”, on the evening of May 19, in Hanoi , Tao Dan Book Joint Stock Company cooperated with the Italian Cultural and Brand Center to introduce to Vietnamese readers the novel “Mother” by “forgotten Nobel writer” Grazia Deledda. This is the first time the female writer’s work has been translated into Vietnamese.

The reason why Grazia Deledda is “ranked” among the forgotten Nobel Prize-winning writers, according to Dr. Tran Ngoc Hieu of Literature, is because many Nobel Prize-winning works seem to be read only by researchers and not widely accessible to the public. However, regarding the novel “The Mother”, Dr. Tran Ngoc Hieu believes that there are at least two reasons why this work will attract Vietnamese readers.

First, it is a novel that revolves around an eternal theme that people are always interested in, which is the dilemma between faith and worldly needs. In a country rich in tradition with strict moral codes, Father Paolo, a young priest who is considered by the people as an example of faith and devotion, falls in love with Agnese, a woman who lives alone in a large family mansion.

On the one hand, Paolo cherished the emotions of love. On the other hand, he was tormented by the fear of disgrace and remorse for having failed his parents. Paolo's mother realized the love affair and the mysterious nighttime movements of her son, so she was determined to protect him from temptations, reminding him of his duty as a parish priest and doing everything she could to prevent this love affair that she considered perverse.

The relationship between mother and son is the second most attractive point of the novel "The Mother" because it is described quite similarly to the boundless maternal love of Asian mothers, which sometimes becomes a pressure and a burden for the child.

As the translator of the work “The Mother”, translator Tran Thi Khanh Van shared that the novel “The Mother” demonstrates the ability to analyze psychology deeply. The entire novel is about Paolo’s inner struggles in the constant battle between duty and love, filial piety and sensuality. Throughout the journey of inner struggle, the suffering mother has always been by Paolo’s side, like a wake-up call of conscience, in order to save the young priest from “worldly sins”.

Grazia Deledda was born in 1871 in Nuoro, Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. She was the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature . The Nobel Prize Committee praised her novels as “ideally inspired works that vividly describe life on her native island and deal with universal human problems with depth and sympathy.”

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