Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Vietnam war refugee Nguyen on US identity
Issued on: Modified:
From 'Apocalypse Now' to 'Platoon', from Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American' to Michael Herr's ‘Dispatches’, when you consider the so-called 'best' books and films about the Vietnam War, few come from Vietnamese voices. But when our guest Viet Thanh Nguyen started writing his debut Vietnam-War-era spy novel, he was determined not to write for a Western audience or translate Vietnamese culture.
Despite Nguyen's sense he was going against publishers' tastes, "The Sympathizer" won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Viet Thanh Nguyen talks to Eve Jackson about the "Hollywood-isation" of the Vietnam War, his book’s political mission and why Donald Trump terrifies most of the literary community.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe