Nguyen Huong Lan has translated some of the most beautiful works of the world's literature, such as Little Nicolas and some books by Marc Levy and Guillaume Musso as a way to build a reading culture in the family and cultivate love for books among children.

Translator Nguyen Huong Lan, owner of InBook. Photo: Ngo Minh/The Hanoi Times

In 2017, Lan had an idea to open a bookstore in Vietnam, first to quench her children's reading thirst, and then for other mothers with children like hers.

Cultural scholar Huu Ngoc supported her for a reason that a bookstore in Hanoi would be beneficial not only to his family but also to society. So the little bookstore called Blue Horizon in Hoan Kiem District was born.

"You can't become wealthy by selling books. However, people desire to accomplish something worthwhile once their lives are stable. It has significance for their kids first, and subsequently for the community," Lan shared.

Julien Audin, Manager of Multimedia Library, French Institute in Hanoi (left) is one of InBook's customers. Photo: Ngo Minh/The Hanoi Times

Then Lan founded InBook, a new stage of development for the bookstore serving as a testament to the rapidly growing demand for English and French-language reading books among the Vietnamese reading community.

"Our book catalog will be continuously updated and expanded to provide readers with a wide range of new and exciting foreign language books in all genres," said Lan.

From the beginning, the bookstore established partnerships with foreign publishers. "This is not an easy task, as a small bookstore from a faraway Asian country has to go through a lot of paperwork and verification to import books from international publishing groups," said Lan.

Currently, InBook already has a customer base of over 10,000 readers and owns a collection of 7,000 book titles in English and French, which have been directly imported.

One of the familiar readers of InBook, Julien Audin, Manager of Multimedia Library, French Institute in Hanoi said: “We would like to congratulate Lan’s bookstore. We at the French Institute support foreign language bookstores like InBook because they share the same cultural mission of introducing and promoting the French language and culture to the Vietnamese community.”