Books on environmental protection win 2021 National Book Award

Participants visit booth displaying award-winning books (Photo: Minh Thu/Vietnamplus)

Hanoi (VNA) - The award ceremony of the National Book Award took place at the Voice of Vietnam’ theatre in Hanoi on November 12, honouring 24 outstanding works.

“Chang hoang da-Gau” (Saving Sorya, Chang and The Sun Bear), an art book about wildlife by writer Trang Nguyen and painter Jeet Zdung, and “Sung, vi trung va thep” (Guns, Germs and Steel) by Jared Diamond (translated by Tran Tien Cao Dang) won the first prize.

The book, Chang Hoang Da - Gau (Saving Sorya, Chang and The Sun Bear), features the journey of Chang, a young girl with big dreams of saving endangered wild animals. It tells the stories about animals that are close to extinction.  

Chang’s adventure begins when she meets Sorya, a sun bear who was saved from traffickers by the Bear Rescue Centre. She is determined to return Sorya back to nature.

Chang and her new friend, Sorya, help readers discover the beauty of nature and the life of wild animals through their stories. 

Chang Hoang Da - Gau includes 120 watercolour paintings by Jeet Zdung. The pictures are the result of a two-month field trip into the wild. 

The 120-page book was released in Vietnam in March, 2020. Profits from the book’s sales will be sent to wildlife projects in Vietnam. 

It has been issued by Pan MacMillan in five countries, China, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Turkey and the US. 

Trang Nguyen, 31, has a PhD in Biodiversity Management from the University of Kent in England.

In 2013, Trang founded WildAct, an NGO which focuses on monitoring illegal wildlife trade markets, and provides conservation education programmes for Vietnamese youngsters. She also received a scholarship for wildlife conservation from Cambridge University.

In 2019, Trang was included on the BBC’s list of the top 100 inspiring and influential women around the world.

Artist Jeet Zdung, whose real name is Nguyễn Tiến Dũng, was born in 1988. He has won prizes for his illustrations. His works were shown at the Cartoon Festival organised by the Wallonie – Bruxelles Delegation in Việt Nam in 2012.

“Chang hoang da – Gau” by Trang Nguyen, a wildlife conservation researcher, wins A prize (Photo courtesy of the publisher)

Meanwhile “Guns, Germs, and Steel” was published in 1997.  It has been translated into 36 languages, including all the major languages of book publishing, as well as languages of small markets such as Estonian and Serbian.  It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, plus numerous other prizes.

The book asks why human history unfolded differently on the different continents over the course of the last 11,000 years.  The book answers this question in two stages.  The first stage involves continental differences in the antiquity and productivity of food production and food storage, resulting from continental differences in wild plant and animal species available for domestication, and in continental axes.  That stage in turn rests on a huge body of studies by botanists and zoologists.  The second stage involves the political, social, economic, and technological developments in human societies caused by those differences in food production and in food storage.  That stage rests on a huge body of studies by archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and other social scientists.

Award-winning books (Photo: Minh Thu/Vietnamplus)

Originating from the Vietnam Book Awards, the National Book Awards has created a buzz not only in the publishing industry, but also helped spread the reading culture in the community.

This year's award has attracted the participation of 47/57 publishers across the country with 365 books.

The award honours writers and people working in the field of Vietnamese book publishing, contributing to the discovery, preservation and promotion of valuable works to a large number of readers, creating motivation for the publishing industry to develop in the right direction and in line with the global integration trend.

Held annually since 2004, the National Book Awards has become a prestigious event of the publishing industry, honouring the value of books, authors and publishers throughout the country.

This is an opportunity for publishers to look back on their achievements over the year and for readers across the country to gain more knowledge about books and the publishing industry./.