Everyone gets what they deserve in this Vietnam novel
This German review of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer by Katharina Borchardt was originally published by Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Sprachlich lässt er es krachen, inhaltlich ist er informiert und sattelfest. Mit seinem Roman «Der Sympathisant» setzt Viet Thanh Nguyen einen markanten Kontrapunkt zur amerikanischen Sicht auf den Vietnamkrieg. Er ist ein Bastard. Schon seit frühester Kindheit wird dem […]
Remembering One Another’s Inhumanity: On Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Vietnam War
This review of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies and The Sympathizer by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu was featured in Volume 52, Issue 1 of the Journal of American Studies. “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory” (Nothing Ever Dies, 4). Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, begins […]
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on Writing About Refugees
In this interview for Aspen Words, Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the challenges of writing The Refugees and the power of writing. Aspen Words will confer the inaugural $35,000 Aspen Words Literary Prize this year, recognizing a work of fiction with social impact. Twenty nominees are still in the running, and the diverse list includes 12 novels and eight short […]
Forgetting and Remembering
In this interview for Jacobin Magazine, Yahya Chaudhry and Viet Nguyen discuss the self-serving stories the US state tells about the Vietnam War. “I come here mindful of the past, mindful of our difficult history,” Barack Obama said during a May 2016 visit to Vietnam, “but focused on the future — the prosperity, security, and human dignity that […]
Vietnamese-American Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen Releases ‘The Refugees’
Hà Thu reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees for VnExpress. Tập truyện ngắn “The Refugees” của Nguyễn Thanh Việt ra mắt ở Việt Nam trong tháng 12. Nhà văn gốc Việt giành giải Pulitzer văn chương Người tị nạn (tên gốc: The Refugees) xuất bản ở Mỹ hồi đầu năm. Tác phẩm gồm tám truyện ngắn, viết về […]
Storyological 2.19 – Everything You Have
This Storyological Podcast, originally published on December 11, 2017, features Viet Thanh Nguyen’s short story “The Transplant” from The Refugees. Podcast: Storyological 2.19 – EVERYTHING YOU HAVE In which we discuss, 1. A City Inside by Tillie Walden, Avery Hill Publishing, 2016. 2. The Transplant by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees, 2017. along with, among other things… Tillie Walden An interview […]
Ishiguro effect: the phenomenon of the new Asian voices in current literature
Juan Batalla counts Viet Thanh Nguyen among the “new voices” of Asian-American literature. Originally published by Infobae. Desde que el autor japonés-británico obtuvo el Nobel en 2017, las obras de los refugiados e inmigrantes, de China a Vietnam, dejaron de ser consideradas como de nicho y ganaron su propio espacio en el debate cultural actual, para […]
An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Michael LeMahieu and Angela Naimou interview Viet Thanh Nguyen about his novels for Contemporary Literature. VIET THANH NGUYEN Conducted by Michael LeMahieu and Angela Naimou Viet Thanh Nguyen is on a roll. In 2015, he published his first novel, The Sympathizer (Grove); it won the Pulitzer Prize and France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. In […]
Spy with self-doubt
Danny Marques Marcalo reviews The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Originally published by NDR. In vielen Büchern über den Vietnamkrieg geht es um die Erfahrungen amerikanischer Soldaten. In den USA hat vor zwei Jahren nun ein Roman aus vietnamesischer Perspektive für Furore gesorgt. Nun erscheint er auch in Deutschland. In “Der Sympathisant” erzählt Viet Thanh […]
Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction 2017
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees was featured in Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of 2017. KIRKUS REVIEW A collection of stories, most set amid the Vietnamese exile communities of California, by the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer (2015). “We had passed our youth in a haunted country,” declares the narrator of the opening story, a ghostwriter […]
Anika Entre Libros Reviews: The Sympathizer
Jorge Riet reviews The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Originally published by Anika Entre Libros. Argumento: “El simpatizante“, de Viet Thanh Nguyen, es una novela que narra las vicisitudes de un espía vietnamita desde los días de la evacuación de Saigón tras la caída de Vietnam del Sur, pasando por los meses de su exilio en los […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
William B. Noseworthy reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Originally published by AsianCha. Nothing Ever Dies is the latest installment in an extended project by Viet Thanh Nguyen—who is probably best-known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer—to provide an entirely new historical reading of the Vietnam Wars. As the […]
Longreads: An Interview with Macarthur ‘Genius’ Viet Thanh Nguyen on Longreads
2017 MacArthur fellow Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses questions of justice, diversity in literature, and empathy across cultures in an interview with Catherine Cusick. Interview originally published by Longreads. Viet Thanh Nguyen had just gotten back from a summer in Paris when he received an unexpected phone call from a Chicago number. He didn’t recognize the […]
How a Pulitzer-Prize Winning Novelist Thinks About Coffee, Screenplays and Facebook
In this interview for the Observer, Jimmy Soni asks Viet Thanh Nguyen about his writing process. This past week, Viet Thanh Nguyen was announced as one of the winners of this year’s MacArthur “Genius” Grants. It is the latest honor in a career that has taken Nguyen from writing screenplay drafts to winning the Pulitzer Prize for […]
The Afterlife of Agent Orange
Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Originally published by Public Books. “All wars are fought twice,” writes Viet Thanh Nguyen in Nothing Ever Dies, “the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” Even decades after the first war ends, the second war […]
