Interview with the New Orleans Review
This interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen for the New Orleans Review was conducted by Elizabeth Sulis Kim. Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese-American author and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, was a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2017. His works include The Sympathizer, which was awarded the […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen on Identity, War, and The Sympathizer’s Sequel
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses identity, war, and The Sympathizer’s sequel in this interview conducted by the Les Cahiers Du Nem admin. For his startling and brilliant debut novel on the Vietnam War, The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded with the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016. In France, he received the “Prix du Meilleur Livre étranger” […]
BookCon 2018: Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Work of Empathy
Hannah Kushnick of Publisher’s Weekly features The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives for BookCon 2018. The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, a startling anthology of essays by various authors, was the brainchild of Abrams executive editor Jamison Stoltz. He was, according to the anthology’s editor, Viet Thanh Nguyen, “moved by the protests against the […]
The Awl: An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
An interview with Bryan Washington regarding refugee literature and American politics. Interview originally published on The Awl. This conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen took place a few days after he received a MacArthur “genius grant”. As the author of a Pulitzer prize-winning novel (The Sympathizer), and a collection of short stories (The Refugees), as well as a nonfiction work chronicling narratives of […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen Is The Pro-Refugee Voice America Needs To Hear
The Huffington Post’s Claire Fallon interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen as a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and prolific author of Vietnamese-American experiences. “Those of us who are refugees and immigrants or who support them, we have to use every tool at our disposal, including our writing.” When it comes to the Vietnam War, Vietnamese refugees in America […]
The Great Vietnam War Novel Was Not Written by an American
Viet Thanh Nguyen writes on the many Vietnamese-American works ignored by both the American and Vietnamese mainstream. This article was originally published by the New York Times. In 1967, Le Ly Hayslip, then known as Phung Thi Le Ly, was a teenager living and working in Da Nang. A peasant girl who had survived war […]
Lettieri on Nguyen, ‘The Sympathizer: A Novel’
Antonella Lettieri reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. Originally published by H-Amstdy. A Man of Two Faces 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winner The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen has been widely acclaimed for introducing American and Western readers to the other side of the story–or history–by retelling the well-known narrative of the Vietnam War from another perspective, namely […]
Casualties of war: Author Viet Thanh Nguyen
Priyanka Kumar reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. Originally published by Pasatiempo from The New Mexican. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, The Sympathizer (Grove Press, 2015), is notable for the density of its first-person voice. The narrator, a Vietnamese army captain, does not spend much time contextualizing anything for the reader. He simply throws us into […]
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, […]
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 […]
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who appears in Santa Ana on Tuesday, discusses his journey as a writer
This is Part 2 of Peter Larsen’s interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen for the Orange County Register. You can read Part 1 here. Even as a refugee child some 40 years ago, Viet Thanh Nguyen remembers loving the books he found everywhere in his first American hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “Some of my earliest memories […]
Stellar nonfiction chosen by the National Book Critics Circle
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War” nominated as a nonfiction finalist in the 2016 National Book Critics Circle. Kate Tuttle reviews the five nonfiction finalists. Originally published by The Los Angeles Times. Next month, the National Book Critics Circle will present its 2016 book prizes in six categories; these are […]
Review: “Nothing Ever Dies” By Viet Thanh Nguyen
Bill Schwab reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War”. Originally published by The Missourian. “All wars are fought twice,” writes Viet Thanh Nguyen. “The first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” Born in Vietnam in 1971 and raised in San Jose, Nguyen began testing this hypothesis […]
Viet Nguyen on How Winning the Pulitzer Prize Changed His Life
Valerie Takahama interviews author Viet Thanh Nguyen for Orange Coast Magazine. The morning of April 18 found Viet Thanh Nguyen in Cambridge, Mass., on tour for his first novel, “The Sympathizer.” He was tapping out emails in the quiet of his hotel room when he heard his electronic devices beeping and pinging. Just like that, […]
Novelist defies Vietnam War histories written by the losers
Lien Hoang reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. Originally published by The Sacramento Bee. Bittersweet was the realization that a stranger would tell my story better than I. Even though “The Sympathizer” is fiction, the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning book taps into a reality that resonates with many Vietnamese Americans, including myself. The novel features a […]
