The Refugees

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