Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Sympathizer, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for First Novel, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Race and Resistance. The Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, he lives in Los Angeles.
Praise for The Refugees: A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
2017
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle,
Esquire, BuzzFeed, Electric Literature, Chicago Public Library,
National Post, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, and Goodreads
Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award
Finalist for the California Book Awards (Fiction)
Nominated for the Bookish Awards (Best Short Story Collection)
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize
Named One of 100 Must-Read Contemporary Short Story Collections by
Book Riot
An Indie Next Selection "Stories about people poised between their
devastated homeland and their affluent adopted country . . . Viet
Thanh Nguyen [is] one of our great chroniclers of displacement . .
. beautiful and heartrending . . . Nguyen's narrative
style--restrained, spare, avoiding metaphor or the syntactical
virtuosity on display in every paragraph of The Sympathizer--is
well suited for portraying tentative states . . . all Nguyen's
fiction is pervaded by a shared intensity of vision, by stinging
perceptions that drift like windblown ashes." --Joyce Carol Oates,
New Yorker "These stories of Vietnamese refugees cast a lingering
spell . . . [A] superb new collection . . . The collection's
subtle, attentive prose and straightforward narrative style
perfectly suit the low-profile civilian lives it explores . . .
With the volume turned down, we lean in more closely, listening
beyond what the refugees say to step into their skins." --New York
Times Book Review "A beautiful collection that deftly illustrates
the experiences of the kinds of people our country has, until
recently, welcomed with open arms . . . It's hard not to feel for
Nguyen's characters . . . But Nguyen never asks the reader to pity
them; he wants us only to see them as human beings. And because of
his wonderful writing, it's impossible not to do so. It's an
urgent, wonderful collection that proves that fiction can be more
than mere storytelling--it can bear witness to the lives of people
who we can't afford to forget." --NPR Books "The Refugees is as
impeccably written as it is timed . . . This is an important and
incisive book written by a major writer with firsthand knowledge of
the human rights drama exploding on the international stage--and
the talent to give us inroads toward understanding it . . . It is
refreshing and essential to have this work from a writer who knows
and feels the terrain on an intellectual, emotional and cellular
level--it shows . . . An exquisite book." --Washington Post "The
Refugees arrives right on time . . . In The Refugees, such figures
aren't, contra Trump, an undifferentiated, threatening mass. They
are complicatedly human and deserving our care and empathy . . . In
our moment, to look faithfully and empathetically at the scars made
by dislocation, to bear witness to the past pain and present
vulnerability such scars speak of, is itself a political act. So,
too, is Nguyen's dedication: 'For all refugees, everywhere.'"
--Boston Globe "Wistfulness threads through The Refugees like an
anthem of displacement. The text is barbed with subtle humor that
is wry and painful. The resulting stories are beautiful in their
astringency and shifting points of view . . . Nguyen's writing
travels along a spine of moral reckoning . . . The collection casts
a formidable spell, especially at this political moment . . . Very
little is forgettable in these lapidary stories." --Los Angeles
Times "Tragically good timing . . . A short-story collection mostly
plumbing the experience of boat-bound Vietnamese who escaped to
California . . . But there are others of different nationalities,
alienated not from a nation but from love or home, and displaced in
subtler ways . . . Ultimately, Nguyen enlarges empathy, the high
ideal of literature and the enemy of hate and fear." --New York
"The 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner returns with a beautifully crafted
collection that explores the netherworld of Vietnamese refugees,
whose lives and cultural dislocation he dissects with precision and
grace." --O, The Oprah Magazine "The Refugees is both timely, given
the current debate about refugees in America, and timeless in its
exploration of universal human struggles. This gorgeous collection
of short stories recalls Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies,
but with Vietnam as the loose center around which the richly drawn
characters orbit . . . The writing in The Refugees is resonant and
evocative, abounding with delightful descriptions . . . A
must-read." --Associated Press "[A] quietly profound peek into the
lives of Vietnam's deracinated and dispossessed . . . Absorb[s]
both the nostalgia and bitterness that have characterized so many
refugees in the decades since 1975, when South Vietnam fell to the
communist North and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese began
streaming out of their homeland." --San Francisco Chronicle "The
Refugees showcases the same astute and penetrating intelligence
that characterized [Nguyen's] Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The
Sympathizer . . . Nguyen is an expert on prickly family dynamics .
. . He can also be a sly humorist . . . The Refugees confirms
Nguyen as an agile, trenchant writer, able to inhabit a number of
contrary points of view. And it whets your appetite for his next
novel." --Seattle Times "A terrific new book of short stories . . .
Nguyen is an exceptional storyteller who packs an enormous amount
of information and images into a short work . . . Nguyen's vision
of the Vietnamese migration to the United States and its impact on
the nation is complex. His message is not Pollyannaish or
demonizing . . . Nguyen's message, instead, is that they are
people, like all of us, with complicated lives and histories."
--Chicago Tribune "[A] timely story collection . . . As our first
major Vietnamese-American writer, Nguyen is a prodigious genius
making up for lost time." --Newsday "The perfect book to read at
this historical moment in America . . . With the self-reflection of
memoir and the clear-eyed, impartial narration of a history, Nguyen
takes readers deep inside his characters in a mere few pages . . .
Eye-opening . . . Read it now, or read it later―but read it."
--Huffington Post "Delicately captures the traumas and triumphs of
the migrant experience . . . [A] poignant collection of short
stories . . . Powerful . . . Nguyen's stories are to be admired for
their ability to encompass not only the trauma of forced migration
but also the grand themes of identity, the complications of love
and sexuality, and the general awkwardness of being . . . They are
also humorous and smart . . . Nguyen writes . . . with a unique
poetry." --Financial Times (UK) "At a time when paranoia about
refugees and migrants has reached a new high in America and perhaps
the world, Viet Thanh Nguyen's first collection of short stories,
The Refugees, adds a necessary voice humanizing this group of
demonized people . . . These eight works celebrate the art of
telling stories as an act of resilience and survival . . . A
beautifully written collection, filled with empathy and insight
into the lives of people who have too often been erased from the
larger American media landscape." --Dallas Morning News "The
Refugees is the book we need now . . . [Nguyen's] new short story
collection demonstrates the richness of the refugee experience--and
highlights its singular traumas . . . The most timely short story
collection in recent memory . . . The stories in The Refugees [are]
haunting and heart-wrenching, but also wry and unapologetic in
their humanity . . . Throughout, Nguyen demonstrates the richness
of the refugee experience, while also foregrounding the very real
trauma that lies at its core." --BuzzFeed "The Refugees is full of
complicated family dynamics, cultural rifts and surprising
resolutions . . . The eight unpredictable and moving stories that
make up The Refugees are a remarkable achievement." --Minneapolis
Star Tribune "Viet Thanh Nguyen's haunting and timely short story
collection . . . Nguyen . . . deftly sketches characters caught in
the limbo of dislocation with power and grace . . . These are
stories worth meditation, each an arresting glimpse into the
enduring disruption of flight and relocation." --Columbus Dispatch
"With masterful economy and ease, the Pulitzer Prize-winner
subverts our expectations of the refugee experience . . . [An]
extraordinary collection . . . Despite the many accolades heaped
upon Nguyen . . . it still comes as a revelation just how beguiling
these stories are. Sharp, sardonic, poignant and profoundly human .
. . The true power of this collection lies in the way Nguyen
subverts stereo-typical notions of the refugee experience, both
sharpening and stretching our appreciation of its vast, universal
dimensions in stories that range across generations, gender and
time . . . Nguyen also possesses an extraordinary ability to evoke
the everyday, the quotidian details of ordinary lives in vivid,
direct prose." --South China Morning Post "The Refugees will haunt
its readers, especially in these times, when refugee stories need
to be told, shared, and told again, ad infinitum." --A.V. Club
"Nguyen's stories deal with ghosts and patriotism, mental illness
and infidelity, and gender roles and homosexuality, among other
topics that highlight the tensions and complexities involved in the
refugees' search for identity and belonging. The stories humanize
Vietnamese-Americans who do not always fit the inflexible 'model
minority' stereotype. They take a segment of the American
population not always on the social radar and bring it into sharp
relief." --America Magazine "In the US, two kinds of stories
typically exist about Vietnam and its people: jungles and napalm,
or protest and politics. A new collection of short stories by Viet
Thanh Nguyen will change that . . . Nguyen . . . is an expert on
the implications of displacement . . . A worthy reminder that
refugees are children, mothers, and fathers--not just casualties."
--Quartz "[A] sophisticated collection . . . Many of these short
stories are bona fide perfect . . . Each story is so smooth that
you don't at first realise how richly the author is layering his
worlds . . . Nguyen's character studies are languorous and
spacious, a collection that feels like a whole." --Saturday Paper
"Excellent . . . Nguyen conveys the trauma and lingering melancholy
of displacement in a way that feels deeply honest yet still
wonderfully imaginative . . . Nguyen has a remarkable eye for
detail that allows him to cast every image with real emotional
force . . . Nguyen's writing is lyrical and searingly evocative . .
. An essential read for anyone seeking to understand the immigrant
experience . . . Nguyen's writing--as polished and powerful as it
was in The Sympathizer--confirms the author's place among today's
most compelling literary voices." --Harvard Crimson "The stories
abound with images of doubleness and surreal twists of perception,
often imbuing the narratives with a dreamlike clarity and
strangeness . . . Throughout the collection Nguyen crafts a
personal language and imagery superbly fitted to each character's
volatile, near-inexpressible memories and reflections. He
instinctively understands what to leave off the page and what to
include, and when to allow readers to fill in the most painful
details for themselves." --Toronto Star "[An] accomplished
collection . . . With anger but not despair, with reconciliation
but not unrealistic hope, and with genuine humour that is not used
to diminish anyone, Nguyen has breathed life into many
unforgettable characters, and given us a timely book focusing, in
the words of Willa Cather, on 'the slow working out of fate in
people of allied sentiment and allied blood.'" --Guardian "With
President Trump's recent attempt to ban refugees from entering
America, the quiet but impressively moving tales dissecting the
Vietnamese experience in California in Viet Thanh Nguyen's The
Refugees are a powerful antidote to all the fear mongering and lies
out there . . . A rich exploration of human identity, family ties
and love and loss, never has a short story collection been
timelier." --Independent (UK) "This stunning collection of stories
affirms the brilliance of Nguyen . . . A collection of exceptional
stories that ring with topicality and truth . . . The opening
story, 'Black-Eyed Women' . . . is a superbly orchestrated piece of
writing, with many movements and depths, moving across generations
. . . The Refugees is a book that needs to be read: it is
astonishingly good." --RTÉ Guide (Ireland) "A timely look at lives
of outsiders in America . . . [Nguyen's] understanding of the
refugee tragedy . . . is profound. Yet, the abiding power of these
intelligent, crafted stories is his reading of human nature in
domestic situations and often astute dialogue . . . [An]
unpretentious, deliberate and well-observed collection." --Irish
Times "The eight stories that make up this brief volume are a
delight . . . The short story is a beautiful affirmation of the
supreme importance of art in our daily lives. And Viet Thanh Nguyen
drives that point home brilliantly." --Mekong Review "A collection
of short stories that span [Nguyen's] 20-year struggle to earn the
title of 'writer.'" --Mother Jones "At a time when the American
federal government is questioning more than ever the value of
refugees' lives, this book is not only a moving read--it's utterly
necessary." --Literary Hub "Viet Thanh Nguyen writes funny . . .
But what also makes him such a notable writer is how he can
oscillate from comedy to tragedy . . . Viet's stories succeed."
--Electric Literature "A remarkable work of fiction." --Bustle (15
of 2017's Most Anticipated Fiction Books) "Both a timely work of
fiction and an artistic retrospective of a community's voyage over
the decades." --National Post (Buzz-worthy Books for February)
"Nguyen's brilliant new work of fiction offers vivid and intimate
portrayals of characters and explores identity, war, and loss in
stories collected over a period of two decades." --Millions (Most
Anticipated Book Previews) "A collection of stories that could not
be any more relevant for the years that lie ahead. Dedicated to all
refugees, everywhere, Nguyen's absorbing prose about people forced
to leave their homes and begin anew should be mandatory reading for
2017." --AM New York (2017 Books to Read) "A heart-rending work
exploring themes of identity, culture, family, immigration,
alienation, and the desire to belong . . . A captivating testament
to the dreams and hardships of immigration." --New York Journal of
Books "[T]his book is vital . . . The ghost of Saigon reaches into
each tale, a reminder that trauma leaves an imprint and echoes in
the lives of different people and their children." --Holly Voigt,
Junkee "The Refugees could not be more timely--or timeless . . .
Nguyen handles the subject matter with empathy and sociopolitical
awareness. He pairs brutally authentic realism with lyric
narratives to ultimately resonate with haunting truth . . . These
stories are unified by their gentle poignancy and their
investigations into shifting identity . . . haunting, beautiful and
urgent." --BookReporter.com "A luminous collection . . . that takes
piercingly intimate looks at the lives of refugees . . . Nguyen's
prose is consistently eloquent and thoughtful." --8Asians.com "Each
searing tale in Nguyen's follow-up to the Pulitzer-winning The
Sympathizer is a pressure cooker of unease, simmering with
unresolved issues of memory and identity for the Vietnamese whose
lives were disrupted by the 'American War.' . . . . Nguyen is not
here to sympathize . . . but to challenge the experience of white
America as the invisible norm." --Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed
review) "A collection of fluidly modulated yet bracing stories
about Vietnamese refugees in the U.S., powerful tales of rupture
and loss that detonate successive shock waves . . . Each intimate,
supple, and heartrending story is unique in its particulars even as
all are works of piercing clarity, poignant emotional nuance, and
searing insights into the trauma of war and the long chill of
exile, the assault on identity and the resilience of the self, and
the fragility and preciousness of memories." --Booklist (starred
review) "For Nguyen groupies desperate for future titles (including
a Sympathizer sequel), The Refugees is a highly gratifying
interlude. For short fiction fans of other extraordinary,
between-culture collections such as Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other
Rooms, Other Wonders and Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Nguyen
won't disappoint." --Library Journal (starred review) "Precise
without being clinical, archly humorous without being
condescending, and full of understanding; many of the stories might
have been written by a modern Flaubert, if that master had spent
time in San Jose or Ho Chi Minh City . . . [Nguyen's] stories,
excellent from start to finish, transcend ethnic boundaries to
speak to human universals." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Nguyen's penetrating gaze will mesmerize readers and open windows
to the particular nuances of a population struggling to find its
identity . . . While Nguyen offers philosophical battles both
internal and external, he also uses language that is delivered with
reverence and grace, conjuring robust imagery . . . The Refugees is
simply a beautiful collection of captivating stories. Nguyen's
flair with words and his genius at succinct, compelling plots and
dynamic characters creates huge worlds in few pages. This is a book
to savor again and again." --Shelf Awareness "Nguyen's stories are
beautiful things full of disorientation, fear, love, and alternate
experiences of home . . . His stories illuminate the Vietnamese
experience--from fleeing the country to growing up
second-generation in other nations." --AudioFile "Longing and loss
infuse these tales of damaged war veterans, tough women and
children caught between two cultures, memorably rendered in
Nguyen's lapidary prose." --London Evening Standard "Nguyen's
fluent portrait of the many faces of exile makes for a touching and
timely read." --Independent (UK) (10 Best Short Story Collections)
"In these times of looking inward and shutting out, of breaking
down bridges and building walls, Nguyen's eight stark and incisive
tales provide valuable, necessary insight into the pain and
upheaval of exchanging a homeland for an adopted other . . .
'Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more, ' one
character declares. But they aren't, or at least not in Nguyen's
capable hands. His are rich, transformative tales whose truths run
deep and whose characters' plights move us." --National (Abu Dhabi)
"Hits like a punch in the gut . . . The Sympathizer is a hard act
to follow, but The Refugees' eight stories are pared so thin of
superfluity that their elegant brevity more than stands up against
their brilliant . . . predecessor . . . Harrowing yet heartening .
. . [A] timely collection . . . with devastating grace." --Straits
Times (Singapore) "Powerful and timely in this day and age, helping
us to understand the dreams and hardships of those who leave one
country to rebuild their lives in another one." --City Weekend
(Shanghai)
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