Best Selling Books by Viet Thanh Nguyen

"Beautiful and heartrending" fiction set in Vietnam and America from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker) In these powerful stories, written over a period of twenty years and set in both Vietnam and America, Viet Thanh Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. This incisive collection by the National Book Award finalist and celebrated author of The Committed gives voice to the hopes and expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, and the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, and family that accompany relocation. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her with a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of migration. "Terrific." — Chicago Tribune "An important and incisive book." — The Washington Post "An urgent, wonderful collection." —NPR

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICATM. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening. Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations. “[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War...As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.” —Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times “In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war...[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.” —Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review “Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

A Kirkus Best Picture Book of the Year 2024 A Kirkus Best Picture-Book Conversation Starter of 2024 A School Library Journal Best Picture Book 2024 From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and illustrator Minnie Phan comes an unforgettable story of a Vietnamese American girl whose life is transformed by a wildfire. ★ School Library Journal, starred review ★ Kirkus Reviews, starred review When Simone is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, it is the beginning of a life-changing journey. On their way to take shelter in a high school gym, the family passes firefighters from a prison unit battling the fire. Simone’s mom tells her that when she was a girl in Viet Nam, she was forced to evacuate her home after a flood. Joined by other children sheltering in the gym, Simone, a budding artist, encourages everyone to draw as a way to process their situation. After a few days, Simone and her mom are able to return to their home, which is fortunately still standing, and her outlook has changed. As Simone begins creating a piece of art with one of her new friends, she realizes that even though they are young, they can dream and work together for a more sustainable future. With a poetic, haunting family story by esteemed author Viet Thanh Nguyen and gorgeous art from illustrator Minnie Phan, this powerful tale introduces an unforgettable young heroine who awakens to a new role fighting for her community and for the future of the planet.

The long-awaited follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer, which has sold more than one million copies worldwide, The Committed follows the man of two minds as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing. Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt,” he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition. The Sympathizer will need all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to prevail. Both highly suspenseful and existential, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen’s position in the firmament of American letters.

In Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, Viet Nguyen argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. This idealization of Asian America means that Asian American intellectuals can neither grapple with their culture''s ideological diversity nor recognize their own involvement with capitalist practices such as the selling of racial identity. Making his case through the example of literature, which remains a critical arena of cultural production for Asian Americans, Nguyen demonstrates that literature embodies the complexities, conflicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture.

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

A band of intrepid chickens leave behind the boredom of farm life, joining the crew of the pirate ship Pitiless to seek fortune and glory on the high seas. Led by a grizzled captain into the territory of the Dog Knights, they soon learn what it means to be courageous, merciful, and not seasick quite so much of the time. A whimsical and unexpected adventure tale, Chicken of the Sea originated in the five-year-old mind of Ellison Nguyen, son of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen; father and son committed the story to the page, then enlisted the artistic talents of Caldecott Honor winner Thi Bui and her thirteen-year-old son, Hien Bui-Stafford, to illustrate it. This unique collaboration between two generations of artists and storytellers invites you aboard for adventure, even if you''re chicken. Maybe especially if you''re chicken.

Una novel·la d''espies trepidant guanyadora del Premi Pulitzer 2016. Comparada per la crítica a les novel·les de Graham Greene, Denis Johnson i George Orwell, El simpatitzant és una novel·la d''espies apassionant que explora la identitat i els Estats Units, i una poderosa història d''amor i amistat. El narrador és un agent doble dividit entre les seves lleialtats. Meitat francès i meitat vietnamita, un "home de dues ments", és un capità de l''exèrcit que aconsegueix fugir als EUA després de la caiguda de Saigon, però mentre intenta construir una nova vida amb altres refugiats vietnamites a L.A., secretament segueix informant els seus superiors comunistes al Vietnam. El simpatitzant examina el llegat de la guerra del Vietnam en la literatura, el cinema i les guerres actuals. Amb la col.laboració de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura.

Im Jahr 1975 werden Offiziere aus Süd-Vietnam in die USA ausgeflogen. Unter ihnen befindet sich auch ein kommunistischer Spion, der die Gruppe weiterhin überwachen soll. Dieser hadert jedoch bald mit seinem Doppelleben und gerät in einen Identitätskonflikt.

È il mese di aprile del 1975 a Saigon. La guerra che va avanti da tempo è alle sue ultime battute e il tanfo della sconfitta appesta l’aria. Il fronte settentrionale ha ceduto dinanzi all’avanzata dei Vietcong, gli aerei americani decollano giorno e notte con a bordo donne, bambini e orfani, e l’ordine ufficiale di evacuazione tarda a venire soltanto per evitare la rivolta in città. A bordo di un C-130, il Generale capo della Polizia Nazionale del Vietnam del Sud si appresta a raggiungere gli Stati Uniti con la famiglia e solo parte dei suoi uomini. Il Generale crede in Dio (neppure Dio e Noè avevano potuto salvare tutti), nella moglie, nei figli, nei francesi, negli americani e... nell’assoluta fedeltà del Capitano, l’unico tra i sottoposti che ha voluto in casa sua. Non sa che il Capitano, figlio illegittimo di una vietnamita e un prete francese, è un doppiogiochista, una spia comunista che ha studiato in California, un uomo con due facce e due menti, che fotografa in gran segreto ogni rapporto e dispaccio e li invia al suo addestratore tra le file Vietcong. Ma una volta rocambolescamente raggiunta Los Angeles, la città più futile d’America, un dilemma atroce attende il Capitano: attenersi al suo credo politico, e mantenere dunque il ruolo da infiltrato nel paese capitalista, o salvare la vita dell’amico con cui ha sigillato un patto di sangue durante l’adolescenza? Romanzo che offre il ritratto impareggiabile di un eroe bifronte, di un «rivoluzionario» solo dinanzi al terribile esito dei suoi ideali, Il simpatizzante ha vinto il Premio Pulitzer 2016 per la narrativa, ottenendo uno straordinario successo di critica e pubblico. «Potente, originale, folgorante, conquista il lettore fin dalle prime pagine». la Repubblica «Un’opera totale». il Fatto Quotidiano «Intriso di sorprendenti riflessioni filosofiche e politiche, e allo stesso tempo in bilico tra generi quali il romanzo di guerra e di spionaggio». il manifesto

Un évènement ! Tous nos parents auraient dû faire un film de leur vie. Du moins, mes parents auraient dû. Viet Than Nguyen a quatre ans quand sa famille fuit le Vietnam après l''offensive communiste pour immigrer aux États-Unis. Séparé de son frère et de ses parents, placé en famille d''accueil, il ne retrouve les siens que plusieurs années après, à San José, en Californie, où ses parents ont ouvert une supérette vietnamienne, recréant autour d''eux un peu de leurs racines. Mais cet American Dream, si rutilant soit-il, masque une violence sourde. Les Nguyen, cibles de fréquentes agressions, se tuent à la tâche et peinent à s''intégrer à un pays qui les renvoie éternellement à leur statut d''étrangers. Leur réussite, ce sera leurs fils. L''aîné a fait d''excellentes études de médecine à Harvard. Le plus jeune, Viet Thanh, est devenu professeur de littérature, puis écrivain, avant d''obtenir le prix Pulitzer pour Le Sympathisant. Récit haletant d''une vie de lutte et de tourments, réquisitoire magistral contre une Amérique impitoyable envers ses minorités, L''Homme aux deux visages est aussi une lettre d''amour d''un fils à ses parents et, au-delà, à tous celles et tous ceux que la vie a forcés à quitter leur pays, leur histoire, leur identité.

In De vluchtelingen geeft Viet Thanh Nguyen een stem aan alle mensen die zich tussen twee werelden bevinden, tussen het geadopteerde vaderland en het geboorteland. Nguyen vertelt ons onder meer over een jonge Vietnamese vluchteling die een ernstige cultuurschok oploopt als hij met twee homoseksuele mannen in San Francisco gaat wonen, over een vrouw wier man aan dementie lijdt en haar begint te verwarren met een vroegere geliefde, en over een meisje in Ho Chi Minh Stad van wie het oudere halfzusje terugkomt uit Amerika en schijnbaar alles heeft bereikt wat zij nooit zal doen.

Auteur du retentissant Sympathisant, Viet Thanh Nguyen livre un recueil de nouvelles d''une justesse, d''une acuité et d''une élégance peu communes, et offre sa voix à tous les déracinés. Dans un pays où tout était affaire de possessions, nous ne possédions rien d''autre que nos histoires. Vietnamiens, ils ont fui le communisme à la fin des années 1970 pour s''exiler de l''autre côté du Pacifique, en Californie. Ils vivent entre deux rives, entre pays d''adoption et pays de naissance, pas encore Américains, plus tout à fait Vietnamiens. Certains sont figés dans le passé, hantés par les fantômes, effarés par l''hédonisme occidental ; d''autres veulent aller de l''avant, pour eux, pour les enfants, pour la possibilité d''une autre vie. Pour n''être plus simplement des réfugiés.

"Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen''s To Save and to Destroy is a deeply personal reflection on outsiders in literature and in US society. Across six essays, first delivered as the Norton Lectures, Nguyen offers insightful readings of authors who shaped his craft, culminating in a poignant and vigorous call for a solidarity of the devastated"--

Als in Vietnam de oorlog in alle hevigheid woedt en de Vietcong oprukt naar Saigon krijgt een revolutionaire Vietnamese officier van de communisten de opdracht de Zuid-Vietnamezen te bespioneren.