The Refugees Synopsis
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.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780802127365 |
| Publication date: |
15th February 2018 |
| Author: |
Viet Thanh Nguyen |
| Publisher: |
Grove Press an imprint of Grove Atlantic |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
224 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Viet Thanh Nguyen Press Reviews
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
