THRILLERS IN DISGUISE: 10 Essential Literary Novels That Master Suspense
Debra Jo Immergut lists The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen in her list of ten suspense novels in this feature for CrimeReads. My recipe for a peak reading experience: equal parts plot and poetry. My shelf of most-revered novels ranges along this border, a personal Pyrenees of suspense-packed stories told in ravishing language and with […]
Frank Buckley Interviews
Frank Buckley interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen for KTLA. The interview video can be seen on the KTLA website. Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of “The Sympathizer,” a spy novel set in the chaos of 1975 Saigon for which Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Viet was born in Ban Me Thuot, Vietnam, and […]
From refugee to Pulitzer-winning novelist
Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks with Christiane Amanpour about his story, politics, and his issue with John Kelly in this interview for CNN. In this candid interview between CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winner reflects on his own experience as a young refugee in light of Jeff Sessions’ remarks regarding the separation […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and USC professor Viet Thanh Nguyen joins Barack Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, and Tom Hanks in being elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ 238th class. Originally published by USC Dornsife. In 2016, Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his novel The Sympathizer, which takes an unconventional and critical look at differing […]
This refugee’s stories relatable to all Americans
Rege Behe, ahead of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s appearance at Carnegie Music Hall on April 9, discusses the author’s experiences as a refugee for The Tribune-Review. Viet Thanh Nguyen earned a Pulitzer Prize for “The Sympathizers,” his debut novel. His second book “The Refugees,” a collection of short stories, also was critically acclaimed. These books not only […]
Ghosts of the road, spectres at the feast
This article originally published by The Economist discusses Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new collection of essays by refugee writers, The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. If the world’s 65.6m forcibly displaced people formed their own country, it would be the 21st-largest—smaller than Thailand, but bigger than France. One of the many things that this imaginary nation lacks, in […]
Confessions of a “complicated” spy
This review of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer by Nikos Xeniou was originally published by Book Press. «Ο ήρωάς μου είναι γυναικάς, αλκοολικός, κατάσκοπος κι επιπλέον δολοφόνος: πράγματα που εγώ δεν είμαι», δηλώνει σε συνέντευξή του ο βιετναμέζος-αμερικανός συγγραφέας Βιετ Ταν Νγκιεν θέλοντας να δηλώσει πόσο ελάχιστα αυτοβιογραφικό είναι το πρώτο του μυθιστόρημα Ο Συνοδοιπόρος που βραβεύτηκε, μεταξύ […]
Remembering Refugees’ Stories
Jaehun Lee of BC’s student newspaper The Heights reflects on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s appearance at the college as part of the Lowell Humanities Series. Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, spoke on Wednesday evening as part of […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen: Going Public
Author, scholar, and MLA member Viet Thanh Nguyen spoke with the MLA’s executive director, Paula Krebs, in October 2017, after he had been awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. PAULA KREBS: Congratulations on winning a MacArthur. Do you have plans? VIET THANH NGUYEN: I run a blog called Diacritics, which is the leading online source for […]
Man of two minds
This review of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer by Robert Linens Jr. was originally published by the Times-News. Having dual faces is the basis of any spies’ profession. Intuition, their craft when recognizing the mask that opponents wear in moments of relating to an enemy. Though what if one’s own mask were much harder to remove, […]
A Vietnamese haunting in America
Andy Kerstetter of Idaho Mountain Express discusses The Sympathizer and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s experiences as a young refugee. No matter what he did, Viet Thanh Nguyen has always felt a pervasive sense of haunting—not so much like he was plagued by actual ghosts, but rather the specter of the past, particularly the Vietnam War and the fact that he […]
How Do You Define ‘Home’?
This roundtable with the editor and contributors of “Go Home!” along with Viet Thanh Nguyen, who wrote the foreword, was originally published by Shondaland. “Is home a real place? Is it a memory?” asks Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, editor of the new anthology “Go Home!” (out from Feminist Press, in collaboration with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop). “Who gets […]
Spies Like Us: A Professor Undercover in the Literary Marketplace
Timothy K. August discusses The Sympathizer and other novels by Viet Thanh Nguyen in this review for Literature Interpretation Theory. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize win has fundamentally changed the way Vietnamese American writing is read. Or at least Nguyen is actively trying to change the way that Vietnamese American writing is read. Leveraging the access that […]
Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen for Literature Interpretation Theory (LIT)
This interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen was conducted by Ruby Perlmutter for LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory. Published in 2015, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer tells the story of a communist spy sent to California after the so-called “Fall of Saigon” (April 30, 1975); his mission involves working as an informant within a newly formed Vietnamese refugee community in […]
How Viet Thanh Nguyen found his voice
Colleen Walsh writes about Viet Thanh Nguyen’s discussion about identity, politics, and politics in his books Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Sympathizer’ novelist returns to Radcliffe for reading, discussion He is haunted by conflict between country and culture, revolution and redemption, embrace and exclusion, and, perhaps most of all, between a yearning […]
