A book collection on Vietnamese fairytales collected and rewritten by Nguyen Dong Chi, one of the country's most popular cultural researchers, has been released in HCM City.

A set of five books, Kho Tang Truyen Co Tich Viet Nam collected and rewritten by professor and cultural researcher Nguyen Dong Chi. (Photo: VNA)

The collection, Kho Tang Truyen Co Tich Viet Nam (The Treasure of Vietnamese Fairytales), includes five books and lively pictures by young artists of the Tre (Youth) Publishing House.

The works include 150 stories of friendship, love and dreams, with highlights of the country's history, culture and lifestyle.

More than 105,000 copies of each book have been printed by Tre, which signed a copyright deal with the representative of the late author to republish his books.

Chi was born in a traditional family in 1915 in Ha Tinh province. He worked for dozens of newspapers, magazines, and institutes.

From 1977 to 1981, he was the director of the Institute of Han Nom Studies (Han Chinese and the ancient Vietnamese ideographic Nom script) in Ha Noi.

He published 26 books and research collections in different fields of history, folk literature and culture.

He spent nearly 25 years to collect, rewrite and translate 2,000 fairytales from Vietnamese and foreign works.

He died in 1984. In 1996, he was posthumously awarded the Ho Chi Minh Prize for literature category from the Government.

(Source: VNA)