Denison: Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen

Denison’s Beck Series welcomes author Viet Thanh Nguyen. His novel “The Sympathizer” is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “The Sympathizer” begins in April 1975, as Saigon is about to fall to communist invasion. Soon enough it does, and the war is over. Or is it? Black comedy, historical novel, and literary thriller, “The Sympathizer” follows a nameless spy who has infiltrated the South Vietnamese army and flees with its remnants to America. His mission: report on their efforts to continue their lost war. As the aide to a general who refuses to admit defeat, he observes the struggles of the Vietnamese refugees to survive in a melancholic Los Angeles. Among them, the general believes, are communist agents. So the spy’s double life continues, hunting communists while helping the general organize a covert army. Their mission: to invade Vietnam and take it back. Nguyen’s other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War” and “Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America.” His next book is a short story collection, “The Refugees,” forthcoming in February 2017 from Grove Press, in partnership with the Thurber House of Columbus.