‘The Refugees’ author Nguyen speaks at Clemson Lit Fest
Viet Thanh Nguyen is interviewed by Paul Hyde of Greenville News ahead of the Clemson Literary Festival. The bodies of dead paratroopers hung from the trees along the roads where Viet Thanh Nguyen fled with his family to safety and freedom in 1975. Nguyen was only 4 years old when his family left South Vietnam as […]
Pulitzer winner’s latest book underscores emotional challenges for refugees
Julia Oller interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen for the Columbus Dispatch. Forced to flee from Vietnam at the tender age of 4, Viet Thanh Nguyen was left with a sense of loneliness and want. The experience is one that the Pulitzer Prize-winning author shares in his latest book, “The Refugees,” along with the stories of seven fictional […]
Booked: The Empathy of Fiction, with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Michael Kazin interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen for Dissent Magazine. Novelist and critic Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his new book of short stories, The Refugees, and how the art of fiction illuminates politics. Viet Thanh Nguyen has emerged as a major figure in American letters. Born in Vietnam in 1971, he fled the country with his parents when […]
Author Profile: Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen seizes the moment to advocate for refugees
Rob Cline interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen for Cedar Rapids Gazette. Did winning the Pulitzer Prize give Viet Thanh Nguyen a platform to advocate for refugees? Nguyen, who came to this county as a refugee from Vietnam when he was a child, is the author of the novel “The Sympathizer,” winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize, and […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees and Jim Shepard’s The World to Come, reviewed: History in the making
Steven W. Beattie reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees. Originally published on The Globe and Mail. *** Fiction and history share a symbiotic relationship. Though the latter provides the raw material for the former, it is often fiction that has the stronger claim on truth, if “truth” is to be understood as emotional or affective, […]
Sydney Morning Herald: The Refugees
Helen Elliot looks into the themes of loss, trauma, and possibility in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees in this review for The Sydney Morning Herald. In an age of hype when you cannot trust previously reliable prizes it is difficult finding the exact note for sincere praise. Viet Thanh Nguyen won a prestigious prize for his […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Refugees
Doug Fabrizio and Viet Thanh Nguyen discuss lives of refugees and the stories of war that they bring in this interview for RadioWest. Thursday, we’re talking about the lives of refugees with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen came to this country when he was four, and he says there’s a tendency to […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen humanizes in ‘The Refugees’
Daily Arts Writer Samantha Lu reviews ‘The Refugees’. Originally published in Michigan Daily. It takes a certain type of genius to write endings the way Viet Thanh Nguyen does: with candor, poetic grace and a haunting emotional spark that sticks. In his newest collection of short stories, “The Refugees,” Nguyen’s endings don’t merely slap on some […]
THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH VIET THANH NGUYEN
Beverly Parayno interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen about refugees, the Vietnamese community, and Nguyen’s books in this article for Rumpus. When I first learned that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and I shared the same hometown of San Jose, California, and that we both grew up there in the 1970s and ‘80s, I knew I […]
Writer Viet Thanh Nguyen reads from Pulitzer novel and tells refugee stories in Salt Lake City
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses The Refugees and The Sympathizer with Ellen Fagg Weist in Salt Lake City. Pulitzer Prize winner’s fictions tell of the reality of being people of “two minds.” Viet Thanh Nguyen knows not many English professors find themselves chatting up Seth Meyers, as he did last month, clarifying the distinction between refugees […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen Tackles Issues of Race, Immigration, and Identity in ‘The Refugees’
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the inspiration for The Refugees and the current issue of refugees in America with the Dinner Party Download. The author tells us the true story that inspired his new collection and shares a few thoughts on why refugees can make Americans uncomfortable. Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s first novel “The Sympathizer” won […]
Roxane Gay and Viet Thanh Nguyen at St. Paul’s Church
Viet Thanh Nguyen (author of The Refugees) and Roxane Gay (author of Difficult Women) discuss their latest books for an event with Politics & Prose Bookstore. If Roxane Gay’s strong-willed female characters are “difficult,” it’s because they want things to “make sense” but are involved in relationships that don’t. They’ve had parents who walked out. […]
Review: Richly Told, And All-Too-Timely, Stores Of The Refugee Experience
Heather Scott Partington reviews ‘The Refugees’. Originally published in The National Book Review. *** Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new collection of short stories, The Refugees, is timely; its coincidental co-release with the president’s executive order on immigration underscores the importance of good writing about those seeking refuge from war-torn nations. And yet Nguyen, whose 2015 novel The Sympathizer won […]
The latest short stories are far from sweet
Tom Fleming reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s ‘The Refugees’ and Ottessa Moshfegh’s collection of short stories. Originally published in The Spectator. Collections from Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ottessa Moshfegh are largely concerned with drug-addiction, vitiligo and dementia. Like his Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel, The Sympathisers, the stories in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees are set largely among the Vietnamese […]
Literary Review: Short Cuts – Viet Thanh Nguyen, April Ayers Lawson, Roxane Gay, Ottessa Moshfegh
Jude Cook reviews short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, April Ayers Lawson, Roxane Gay, and Ottessa Moshfegh. Originally published by The Literary Review. It might be premature to herald another renaissance of the American short story, but after books such as last year’s Prodigals by Greg Jackson and Scary Old Sex by Arlene Heyman, and the appearance of these […]
