7 stores · curated ORBIS register
Hanoi
Gác Xép Bookstore sells secondhand and imported English-language fiction from its Hanoi shop. The store also buys used books and ships nationwide with free delivery over 500,000 VND.
Best for Hanoi bookshop specializing in secondhand and imported English-language fiction
Hanoi
Librairie Française de Hanoi stocks over 16,800 French-language books and Clairefontaine stationery from its shop on Ngo Nui Truc in Ba Dinh district. It also carries Larousse and Le Robert dictionaries.
Best for French-language books and Clairefontaine stationery, with 16,847 titles in stock
Hoàn Kiếm
The Bookshelf Hanoi sells English-language books from a French-era house at 8 Nguyễn Chế Nghĩa in Hoàn Kiếm. Founder Hana opened it in January 2018 as a single wooden shelf inside a decor shop on Đặng Văn Ngữ. The shop moved twice before settling on this street in 2021. Shelves run from fiction and poetry to science and cooking, with a pre-loved section for secondhand copies.
Best for English-language books with a pre-loved shelf and children's titles
The Bookshelf Hanoi began in January 2018 as one wooden shelf at 157 Đặng Văn Ngữ. The shelf stood in a corner of Riri Home, a decor shop of twenty square metres. Founder Hana had studied finance. As a student she bought foreign-language books from a shop near Hoàn Kiếm lake whose owner often discounted them for her. She began selling books to pay for more of her own reading. In autumn 2019 the shop moved to 12 ngõ Trần Xuân Soạn. In 2021 it settled at 8 Nguyễn Chế Nghĩa, a street laid out in 1928 near the centre of the city. The same year two sister shops opened as The Mag Shelf and The Goods Shelf. In December 2022 a further room opened at HipHub Cafe near the cathedral. Staff call the shop Seo, a Vietnamese rendering of Shelf. The stock is English-language and covers fiction, memoir, philosophy, science, business, art. A children's shelf and a pre-loved section for secondhand copies sit alongside. Each order goes out with a bookmark and a thank-you card that changes with the season. A 2026 profile in Báo Quốc tế describes the shop as a meeting point where Vietnamese readers and foreign visitors talk across the shelves. Roughly three in ten customers arrive from abroad. The registered company behind the shop is Kệ Sách Thế Giới, owned by Quách Mỹ Hoa, and its filing gives the same address on Nguyễn Chế Nghĩa.
Ba Đình
Hanoi's first English-language bookshop, opened in 2001 by Australian author Pam Scott as an expat book exchange; Vietnamese owner Hoang Van Truong took over in 2006.
Best for English-language books at this Hanoi shop since 2001
The Bookworm opened in Hanoi in August 2001, founded by Australian author Pam Scott as the city's first and only English-language bookshop, built initially as a book exchange for the expatriate community. In 2006, the store passed to Hoang Van Truong, a Vietnamese reader whose Australian foster parents had run it, and who took over full-time. The shop holds roughly 15,000 titles, about 40 percent of them new stock imported from the United States and United Kingdom, with the rest secondhand copies bought or exchanged with customers. Its customer base splits roughly three ways: about 40 percent foreign residents, 30 percent Vietnamese readers, and 30 percent travelers passing through. The store operates a buyback program for used English-language books and offers same-day delivery within Hanoi. Located in the Ba Đình district, it remains one of the few dedicated English-language bookshops in Vietnam, serving both the long-term expat community and visitors looking for reading material during their stay.
Old Quarter, Hanoi
A locally owned bookshop in the heart of Hanoi's Old Quarter selling new, used and remaindered books, including Vietnamese authors translated into English and French. Its inventory also covers travel, philosophy, cookbooks and children's literature.
Best for New and used books in old quarter
District 1
Nguyen Hue Bookstore at 40 Nguyen Hue Street in Ho Chi Minh City was established in 1976 as the office of the state book distribution enterprise and became a bookstore in the early 1980s. It remains the long-standing symbol of the FAHASA chain. Books and stationery fill the floors along with cultural products, and the store runs as one of FAHASA's smart bookstores with automatic checkout. Sai Gon Bookstore at 60-62 Le Loi Street is nearby.
Best for Vietnamese and imported books
Fahasa began on August 6, 1976 as Ho Chi Minh City's state-run book distribution company, set up under the Department of Culture and Information shortly after reunification to get publications from the north into circulation in the south. The 1980s Doi Moi reforms nearly broke the state bookstore sector: private distributors and cheaply produced 'instant books' undercut it so badly that some state shops rented out floor space or sold unrelated goods just to keep operating. Fahasa's turnaround began in the mid-1990s, when it adopted a self-selection retail format — letting customers browse shelves directly rather than requesting titles from a clerk — and began importing English-language titles from publishers including Oxford and Cambridge. Its Nguyễn Huệ store in District 1, renovated during that period, became the model location for the new format. The company was equitized in 2006, converting from a fully state-owned unit into a joint-stock company, and has since grown into Vietnam's largest bookstore network — around 140 stores across 25 provinces as of 2025, alongside stationery, toys and an online storefront.
District 1
Nhã Nam has published Vietnamese literature and translations since 2005, when it launched with Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. It now runs a nationwide bookstore chain from its Hanoi headquarters.
Best for Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Nhã Nam entered Vietnam's book market in February 2005 with an unlikely opener: a Vietnamese translation of Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The publisher's real breakthrough came soon after, when its edition of Đặng Thùy Trâm's wartime diary sold close to 500,000 copies, a record for Vietnamese publishing that pulled the company into the national conversation. Two decades on, Nhã Nam has built its catalogue on literary fiction in translation alongside a growing non-fiction list, holding Vietnamese-language rights to authors including the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Don Miguel Ruiz, Naomi Klein, and Elizabeth Gilbert, and working with international houses such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. Its titles have collected a run of national honors, from the Sách Hay literary prize to Vietnam's National Book Award and repeat wins at the Hanoi Writers' Association and Vietnam Writers' Association translation prizes. From its headquarters at 23-25 Chùa Láng in Hanoi's Đống Đa district, the company now runs its own bookstore network across the country alongside its publishing arm, putting Nhã Nam in the unusual position of controlling both what gets translated into Vietnamese and where readers buy it.
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