Viet Thanh Nguyen

A collection of stories written over a twenty-year period that examines the Vietnamese experience in America as well as questions of home, family, and identity.

The Refugees

Ozge Kara

I haven’t read stories for years so it was hard for me to come back to the book once a story was finished. It had more to do with Corona and how it is harder to read books in this time that the book itself. This was the first time I read a Vietnamese author and I really liked it.

Karis Ryu

4.5! God bless used book stores and haunting storytelling.

Toyah Blackburn

I don't always enjoy short story collections but this was so incredibly written. The style of writing carries you through and it's easy to get lost in the histories that are told. The characters are engaging and you can't help but connect with them.

Chiyeung lau

Last 3 stories really stood out to me: The Americans, Someone Else Besides You, and Fatherland. 

Also enjoyed the two essays as well.

celeste

Esperaba un poco más de esta colección de historias cortas la verdad, en especial porque el autor ha sido bastante celebrado por su novela galardonada "The Sympathizer", y quizás por esto esperaba algo más especial de The Refugees. Es una colección de menos de 10 novelas, todas con personajes inmigrantes o refugiados de Vietnam en Estados Unidos, ya sea durante la guerra de Vietnam, o luego de la guerra. La mayoría trata sobre temas como el shock cultural o la sexualidad, mientras que otras simplemente tratan sobre historias de la vida cotidiana de estos personajes. En general, son historias llevaderas e interesantes, y que al ser historias cortas, una vez que uno se encuentra intrigado por la trama o los personajes, la historia ya termina, y uno se queda con las ganas de leer un poquito más sobre ellos.

From the author of The Sympathizer, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Refugees is the second piece of fiction from a powerful voice in American letters, praised as “beautiful and heartrending” (Joyce Carol Oates, New Yorker), “terrific” (Chicago Tribune), and “an important and incisive book” (Washington Post) Published 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 and set in both Vietnam and America, Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. With the same incisiveness as in The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen 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 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 migration. The second work of fiction by a major new voice in American letters, 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.

Joycelyn Ghansah

mercy

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.

Yasmin

sky na

From the author of The Sympathizer, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Refugees is the second piece of fiction from a powerful voice in American letters, praised as "beautiful and heartrending" (Joyce Carol Oates, New Yorker), "terrific" (Chicago Tribune), and "an important and incisive book" (Washington Post)

The Refugees

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