Nam Ông mộng lục

Dream memoir of Southern Man
南翁夢錄

Author	Lê Trừng
Country	China
Language	Han
Subject	Annamese anecdote
Genre	Memoir
Publication date	1442

Dream memoir of Southern Man (Chinese: 南翁夢錄, Vietnamese : Nam Ông mộng lục) is a memoir written by Annamese official Hồ Nguyên Trừng during his exile in Ming dynasty in the early 15th century.

Hồ Nguyên Trừng (or Lê Trừng) was the eldest son of Hồ Quý Ly who was the founder of the Hồ dynasty, and a renowned military inventor of Annam for his innovation in making cannons and warships. After the defeat of the Hồ dynasty by the army of the Ming dynasty, Hồ Nguyên Trừng was captured in Hà Tĩnh in 1407 and transferred to China. He was pardoned and granted a position of supervisor in the military industry of the Ming. He was eventually promoted to Deputy Minister of Industry in the imperial court of the Ming dynasty.

At the end of his life, Hồ Nguyên Trừng decided to write his memoir to express his nostalgia about his homeland Đại Việt. The memoir was first published in China in 1442. Later Nam Ông mộng lục was brought back to Vietnam by the Vietnamese ambassador Lê Quý Đôn and had a considerable significance on the historiography and literature of Vietnam. In the foreword of the book, Hồ Nguyên Trừng wrote that he wanted to recite the stories that he had known in order to praise exemplary figures in history and provide those stories for readers.Nam Ông mộng lục is considered the first memoir and one of the earliest novels written in Classical Chinese in the history of Vietnamese literature. However, Hồ Nguyên Trừng was not aware of the fact that his work belong to a new fictitious genre of literature instead of simply as an historical text.