The Refugees

Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer was one of the most widely and highly praised novels of 2015, the winner not only of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also the Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the ALA Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Nguyen's next fiction book, The Refugees, is a collection of perfectly formed stories… (more)

With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, 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 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.

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Fiction Short Stories American and Canadian literature

Editorial reviews (6 reviews)

Bookconscious : The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (April 17, 2019)

In The Refugees Nguyen contributes to America’s narrative plentitude by adding to our collective story lives we must see if we’re ever to satisfy those ghosts.

SF Gate : ‘The Refugees,’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen (February 16, 2017)

Given his fond memories of the past and his obliviousness to the present, the confused professor comes across as one of the least troubled characters in Nguyen’s quietly profound peek into the lives of Vietnam’s deracinated and dispossessed.

The New York Times : Ghost Stories: Vietnamese Refugees Wrestle With Memory in a New Book by the Author of ‘The Sympathizer’ (February 13, 2017)

If at times I found myself missing the playful, voice-driven punch of “The Sympathizer,” it’s a tribute to Nguyen’s range that these eight stories cast a quieter, but no less devastating, spell.