The Truffle Eye by Vaan Nguyen

Translated from Hebrew by Adriana X. Jacobs
Vaan Nguyen has been described as “a veritable juggler of Hebrew,” a poet whose work radically remixes world classics and pop culture, the personal and the political, past and present. Born in 1982 in Israel to refugees of the Vietnam War, Nguyen’s debut collection, The Truffle Eye, addresses questions of identity and cultural legacy from what she has described as “points of emotion and shock.” Her poems travel far and wide, between Tel Aviv and Hanoi, taking in views of Manhattan, Paris, Milan, Salzburg, Pasadena and more. Through these movements, Nguyen reflects on how our lives take shape in the daily migrations we make between lovers, family, work, and the places we call home.

When The Truffle Eye (Ein ha-kmehin), first came out in Israel in 2008 (an expanded version in 2013), Nguyen was hailed as a “phenomenon — a poet whose first book positions her at the center of Israeli poetry.” In 2005, she appeared in the film, “The Journey of Vaan Nguyen” (2005) by Duki Dror, which documents the trip she and her father took to Vietnam to try to reclaim their confiscated land and property. As an actress and host, she has appeared in several other films and television programs, and she has also worked as a journalist and columnist. She began writing at age nine, and her work has been published in numerous mainstream and literary outlets.

Adriana X. Jacobs is the author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Her translations have appeared in various print and online journals, including Gulf Coast, Seedings, World Literature Today, Poetry International, The Ilanot Review, and in the collection Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant (Wayne State UP, 2016). She is associate professor of modern Hebrew literature at the University of Oxford.