The Refugees

In THE REFUGEES, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. 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 for 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 immigration. The second piece of fiction by a major new voice, THE REFUGEES is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives.

“Nguyen's eight heart-wrenching and hopeful stories ought to be required reading for every politician in this era of wall-building and xenophobia. - The Guardian, Fiction to Look Out for in 2017A remarkable debut . . . both thriller and social satire . . . tense, psychologically complex, riveting - New York Times on The SympathizerA powerful antidote to all the fearmongering and lies out there . . . A rich exploration of human identity, family ties and love and loss, never has a short story collection been timelier. Five stars. - the Independent The Sympathizer reminded me of how big books can be - Guardian (Best Books of 2015) on The SympathizerA collection of fluidly modulated yet bracing stories about Vietnamese refugees in the US, 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) Beautiful and heartrending - the New Yorker, Joyce Carol Oates”

Nguyen's eight heart-wrenching and hopeful stories ought to be required reading for every politician in this era of wall-building and xenophobia. - The Guardian, Fiction to Look Out for in 2017

A remarkable debut . . . both thriller and social satire . . . tense, psychologically complex, riveting - New York Times on The Sympathizer

A powerful antidote to all the fearmongering and lies out there . . . A rich exploration of human identity, family ties and love and loss, never has a short story collection been timelier. Five stars. - the Independent

The Sympathizer reminded me of how big books can be - Guardian (Best Books of 2015) on The Sympathizer

A collection of fluidly modulated yet bracing stories about Vietnamese refugees in the US, 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)

Beautiful and heartrending - the New Yorker, Joyce Carol Oates

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of the short story collection The Refugees and the novel The Sympathizer. The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

In THE REFUGEES , Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. 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 for 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 immigration. The second piece of fiction by a major new voice, THE REFUGEES is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives.

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