HOME View All Genre

Book

Audiobook

GENRES 🌙 Dark

A Man of Two Faces - Viet Thanh Nguyen

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

Release Date: 2023-10-03

Genre: Biographies & Memoirs

4.5 (17 ratings)
Read Download
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide

With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.

At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban MĂȘ Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San JosĂ©. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICATM. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SĂ iGĂČn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.

Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.

A Man of Two Faces - Viet Thanh Nguyen

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

Release Date: 2023-10-03

Genre: Biographies & Memoirs

4.5 (17 ratings)
Read Download
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide

With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.

At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban MĂȘ Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San JosĂ©. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICATM. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SĂ iGĂČn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.

Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.

More by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Sympathizer

The Committed

The Refugees

A Man of Two Faces

Nothing Ever Dies

The Displaced

El simpatizante

To Save and to Destroy

Le sympathisant

Race and Resistance

Flyktingar

Il militante

O Comprometido

Flyktningene

Jamais rien ne meurt

Les réfugiés

Simone

El idealista

I Rifugiati

Der Sympathisant

Niente muore mai

Salvare e distruggere

Il simpatizzante

L'idealista

Les déplacés

Um Homem de Duas Caras

Le Sympathisant

Die Idealisten

A szimpatizĂĄns

Die GeflĂŒchteten

O comprometido

El simpatitzant

O simpatizante

Sympatisören

De hÀngivna

De vluchtelingen

De sympathisant

Io sono l'uomo con due facce

L'Homme aux deux visages

The Best American Short Stories 2026

Le Dévoué

Anders-zijn

Related Articles