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 […]
Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen Talks Parking Lots and Refugees at The Egyptian
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses The Sympathizer and refugees at The Egyptian Theatre. Original article by Harrison Berry published on Boise Weekly. On stage before a packed house at the Egyptian Theatre Tuesday evening, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and MacArthur Grant recipient Viet Thanh Nguyen spoke of his obsession with displaced people. “I am a refugee—was a refugee,” he said. “It’s a distinction […]
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 […]
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 […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer: Two Hearts in My Chest
Marius of Buch-Haltung reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. Originally published on the Buch-Haltung website. Ich bin ein Spion, ein Schläfer, ein Maulwurf, ein Mann mit zwei Gesichtern. Da ist es vielleicht kein Wunder, dass ich auch ein Mann mit zwei Seelen bin. (Nguyen, Viet Thanh, Der Sympathisant, S. 9) Was für ein Einstieg in den Roman Der […]
The Sympathizer: Memories that Bite
Tati Jurado reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer for Info Libre. Viet Thanh Nguyen ganó el Pulitzer de ficción tras haber recibido 13 rechazos de diferentes editoriales: “No podemos publicar más novelas de Vietnam” El simpatizante es una historia donde no hay buenos ni malos pero sí hay, como en toda guerra, pérdidas irreparables Los clubes de lectura forman un tejido muy […]
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 […]
