VHM_0064

This English-Vietnamese dictionary bears a handwritten inscription (dated May 27, 1955) by the author Nguyễn Văn Khôn to Ngô Đình Diệm, then Prime Minister—months before Diệm became the first President of South Vietnam. After Diệm’s assassination in 1963, the volume left the Presidential Palace. It came into the hands of Teacher Hoàng, a former palace press officer who, after his release from being imprisoned in "reeducation camps," used it to teach English to neighbors. In the late 1970s–1980s, amid postwar displacement, Mrs. Đặng Thị Ánh Tuyết helped pass the book from Teacher Hoàng to her younger brother who needed study materials after he had fled Vietnam by boat and had resettled in Canada. Tuyết's brother later returned it to her after she herself had resettled in Canada.