The Refugees
Nguyen Viet ThanhPublished in hardcover to astounding acclaim, The Refugees is the remarkable debut collection of short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Sympathizer. In these powerful stories, written over a period of twenty years & set in both Vietnam & America, Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland & the country of birth.
With the same incisiveness as in The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to the hopes & expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, & the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, & 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 & 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 & hardships of migration.
The second work of fiction by a major new voice in American letters, The Refugees is a beautifully written & sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, & the relationships & desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives.