Books by Viet Thanh Nguyen
“It’s a meditation on his parents, who are Vietnamese Catholics. They came to the United States and ended up in California, where they raised their two sons. It’s about the experience of being a migrant…It’s a very original approach to memoir, that encompasses history, drama and indeed contemporary politics—although not entirely frontally. It’s not just about migration, it’s also a meditation on memory and reality and ‘what is truth?’ But it situates those questions that we all share in a context of biculturalism, of displacement, and of relationship with the past.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Isabel Hilton, Journalist
“Viet Thanh Nguyen is a powerful new voice for the Vietnamese who left the country after the end of the war in 1975, mainly South Vietnamese who fled after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and settled in the US. The protagonist is half French, half Vietnamese. He’s a spy working undercover for the communists in Saigon and then in the US. When he returns to post-war communist Vietnam, he is imprisoned by his own side. The novel ends at sea with the narrator leaving Vietnam among a crowd of boat people. Viet Thanh Nguyen illustrates the complexity of divided loyalties that come from Vietnam’s history—from being a colony for 100 years, then at war for over 30 years, with families split between supporters of the North and supporters of the South.” Read more...
Sherry Buchanan, Journalist
Interviews where books by Viet Thanh Nguyen were recommended
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novels
Every year, the Pulitzer Prize jury awards $15,000 to a work of “distinguished fiction published during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” We’ve compiled a guide to the books that have won this prize since the turn of the millennium.
The Best Vietnamese Novels, recommended by Sherry Buchanan
Vietnam has had a tumultuous history and its literature is one powerful way of trying to understand it better. Journalist, author and publisher Sherry Buchanan—who has spent two decades introducing Vietnam’s culture to English-speaking audiences—talks us through the best Vietnamese novels available in English, spanning the years from French colonialism to the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.
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1
Nuclear War: A Scenario
by Annie Jacobsen -
2
Question 7
by Richard Flanagan -
3
The Story of a Heart
by Rachel Clarke -
4
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
by Viet Thanh Nguyen -
5
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
by Sue Prideaux -
6
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
by David Van Reybrouck
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Isabel Hilton
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist, recommended by Isabel Hilton
From nuclear war to a heartbreaking medical story, from the memoirs of novelists and the life of an artist to the struggle for independence in Indonesia, British journalist Isabel Hilton introduces the six books that made the shortlist of the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction prize.
