Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Ploughshares Reviews The Refugees

The cover of Mai Der Vang's Afterland to the left, and Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Refugees on the right

Ploughshares‘ Yasmin Majeed writes a review on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees and Mai Der Vang’s Afterland, exploring both as a ghost story. “When we migrate we murder from our lives those we leave behind,” wrote Mohsin Hamid in his heralded novel of the contemporary refugee crisis, Exit West. Migration, especially for refugees, is a violent crossing. When […]

Singapore Unbound: The Refugees

Andrea Yew of Singapore Unbound examines the themes of identity, displacement, and trauma in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees. In a time characterized by political instability and virulent polemics, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s collection of short stories The Refugees is a much-needed mediation about the experience of displacement. From the young Vietnamese refugee who is haunted by the loss of […]

Dawn: The Refugees

Cover of The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Dawn’s Hurmat Kazmi reviews the short stories within Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees, and comments on its timely publishing. Had he not deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last year with his novel The Sympathiser, Viet Thanh Nguyen, like the characters in his new book of short stories, The Refugees, may have been overwhelmed. […]

In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s ‘The Refugees,’ wistfulness is an anthem of displacement

Karen Long reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees. Originally published by The Los Angeles Times.  In a short time, Viet Thanh Nguyen has encircled the American literary consciousness: first with his mind-bending 2015 novel “The Sympathizer,” then last year’s cultural history “Nothing Ever Dies” and now with eight short stories entitled “The Refugees.” Nguyen, the […]