The Truffle Eye - Paperback

by Vaan Nguyen (Author), Adriana X. Jacobs (Translator)

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.

Author Biography

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.