The Refugees Book Review
In his first short story collection, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his novel The Sympathizer, takes a look at how it feels and what it means to be a refugee. I've received this book via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publishers, Grove Atlantic, for the opportunity to read and review this terrific short stories collection.
Elwood Curtis is a law-abiding, teenage paragon of rectitude, an avid reader of encyclopedias and after-school worker diligently overcoming hardships that come from being abandoned by his parents and growing up black and poor in segregated Tallahassee, Florida. With anger but not despair, with reconciliation but not unrealistic hope, and with genuine humour that is not used to diminish anyone, Nguyen has breathed life into many unforgettable characters,... With President Trumps recent attempt to ban refugees from entering America, the quiet but impressively moving tales dissecting the Vietnamese experience in California in Viet Thanh Nguyens...
Fortunately, his first short story collection The Refugees upholds his reputation as a tactful storyteller. Each story in The Refugees studies what it means and especially how it feels to be a refugee through the lens of very different characters all bound to Vietnam in one way or another. Viet Thanh Nguyens new book, The Refugees, is both timely, given the current debate about refugees in America, and timeless in its exploration of universal human struggles.
Viet Thanh Nguyens new collection of short stories, The Refugees, is timely; its coincidental co-release with the presidents executive order on immigration underscores the importance of good writing about those seeking refuge from war-torn nations. Viet Thanh Nguyens short story collection, THE REFUGEES, could not be more timely --- or timeless. The deft hand that brought us the searing, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel THE SYMPATHIZER returns with eight tales of disparate refugees.
The Refugees is a collection of short stories of Vietnamese refugees tainted with their war history. It has 8 different stories having different faces and phases of struggles with the transition and carrying on a new life in a foreign land.
