A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial

Praise for A Man of Two Faces:

Longlisted for the National Book Award

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, and Amazon

Named a Best Memoir of the Year by Vulture and Library Journal

Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, TIME, Los Angeles Times, Globe and Mail, Literary Hub, Bookpage, The Millions, and Amazon Book Review

"Audacious . . . The stereoscopic structure of the personal and the cultural challenges us to reflect on how the formation of self involves stories told about us as well as those we tell ourselves. In Nguyen's case, this requires vigorous self-interrogation and self-inventory . . . The subject matter is serious--war, colonization, Nguyen's mother's decades-long illness before her death in 2018 and his inability to recall particularly painful times when she was hospitalized--but there is a playfulness as well . . . His most emotionally powerful writing revolves around his parents . . . Sharp and affecting, this book is both: a weapon, a lamentation."--Lisa Ko, Washington Post

"A Man of Two Faces is cocky and riveting--self-consciously constructed as if written for a standup audience. It also serves as a generous, one-stop primer for both his fiction and scholarly work on wars and the ethics of remembrance . . . The mother in this story is an indelible force of nature: She achieves a reconciliation with memory and history by acknowledging the pain of others and affirming her unvanquished will for survival."--Thúy Đinh, NPR

"If the book's fragmentary origins are conspicuous, so is the author's prodigious gift for distilling memory, and its absence, into words that cannot be lost. Scattered throughout are the shards of an intimate personal history, leaving the reader to comb through the debris as if searching for the remains of a loved one."--Lauren Christensen, New York Times

"Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen returns with a deeply personal and political memoir that uses the defining moments of his own life to explore his conflicted relationship with America . . . A witty and scathing look at what it means to be a refugee, an immigrant, and an American in a world that doesn't see you as you see yourself."--TIME

"An artfully intertwined medley of Nguyen's essays, lectures and interviews, A Man of Two Faces is an innovative expose of the racism that shackles refugee populations of color to harmful stereotypes . . . A provocative and dynamic family portrait of America's immigrants, shining a light on the humanity too few of us see."--Carol Memmott, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Nguyen, one of today's most important writers, structures his memoir around learning how to be a man through being a son and then a father. Forced to flee Vietnam with his family as a child, Nguyen grew up around violence in San Jose--his parents were shot in their grocery store when he was 9. But as he grew up and identified as American too, he wondered about this dual legacy, which so infused his Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction. Here he ponders how it has shaped him."--Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times

"Collage may be an apt word to describe this genre-bending memoir from Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur fellow Viet Thanh Nguyen. Weaving together forms that include exquisite prose, verse and photographs, this masterful memoir follows the author and his family from their home country of Vietnam as they resettle in San Jose, including explosive revelations about family, memory and loss."--Hannah Bae, Datebook

"In this memoir, Nguyen wrestles with his own family's experience moving from Vietnam to California, violence and racism, and the burning question that so many face: who am I? Teeming with broader stories of immigration and cultural clashes, Nguyen once again offers a thrillingly nuanced portrait of the allegiances, complexities, and aims that guide a single life."--Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review

"A Man of Two Faces is at its core a memoir about the education of a refugee. Nguyen starts with his early days in the United States. But as Nguyen experiences the world as an Asian American, an academic, a writer, and, eventually, a father, he becomes attuned to the conditions and contradictions that make his life (im)possible--war, displacement, the American dream, and more . . . The memoir is Nguyen's opportunity to ask: What do we remember and what do we forget? If we forget, why do we forget and for whom are we forgetting? Ourselves? Our loved ones? Our country? And what about cultural memory, which is to say history?"--Eric Nguyen, Electric Literature"A Man of Two Faces pursues in heroic fashion the redemptive power of the writing life. If you are going through hell, write your way through it, which is precisely how Nguyen's inventive formal structure comes to life . . . We can almost smell the blood and ink blend on the page as he moves through his recollections, or recollections, and in the process, works his way through the hell of memory, back to the city of the Dionne Warwick song."--Gary Singh, Alta"Shattering . . . Nguyen is an intriguing, inventive, and perceptive writer and his mesmerizing memoir takes hold of us."--Elaine Margolin, New York Journal of Books"This bold and ambitious memoir from novelist Nguyen employs a dazzling hybrid of prose and poetry to explore the author's life in America as a Vietnamese refugee . . . A savvy and complex account of coming-of-age in a foreign land."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Nguyen explores 'the thin border between / history and memory' in this many-faceted, stylistically complex, eviscerating, and tender montage of memoir, facts, dissent, and clarification . . . A uniquely intricate, clarion, and far-reaching inquiry into what we disparage and what we value, asserting the bedrock necessity of history, story, and remembrance . . . Nguyen's unflinching blend of memoir and social critique will garner avid attention."--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"Nguyen blazes a nonlinear, literary way through the histories of Vietnam and the US, his parents' arduous lives in each and his own struggles to find his voice as citizen, son and writer."--BookPage (starred review)

"A dizzying emotional and intellectual journey through the author's life and heritage as a refugee from Vietnam, raised primarily in San Jose, California. With daring formal experimentation that blends traditional memoir, personal and critical essays, and blank-verse poetry, Nguyen tells his story as a Vietnamese refugee and American, as a person of many worlds who can live but one life, and as a proud American with many reasons to despise so much of what the U.S. has done and continues to do . . . The result is a remarkable array of deeply felt experiences, intellectual discoveries, and withering dark comedy, driven by clear, unrelenting, and head-throbbing prose that delivers a blistering call for multiracial and decolonial justice. A Man of Two Faces is a courageous and brilliant confrontation with the myriad, often debilitating, contradictions of this world."--Shelf Awareness (starred review)

"A kaleidoscopic memoir . . . Deeply personal and intensely political . . . If the author's criticism is understandably scathing, there is also a mischievous sense of humor . . . Nguyen indisputably captures the workings of a quicksilver and penetrating mind . . . Lyrical and biting, by one of our leading writers."--Kirkus Reviews

"Viet Thanh Nguyen's A Man of Two Faces is a triumphant memoir that sears through the fog of American amnesia. A vulnerable and scorching mirror to self and to nation, his book explores his family's 'epic and quotidian' struggles as refugees and indicts Hollywood as propaganda that has fed the American war machine and anti-Asian racism. It is a fissured lyric on memory and a clarifying meditation on empire. Every American needs to read this essential book."--Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

"A Man of Two Faces is a searing and sensitive memoir on the long shadow that war casts on those who manage to survive it. This book is a work of love and anger and care and it will resonate with everyone who has lost a home."--Laila Lalami, author of The Other Americans and Conditional Citizens

"A Man of Two Faces is an alchemical feat of memory, history, and theory that beautifully achieves a difficult balance: a bold and searing polemic, it's at the same time a moving, personal tale. Above all, it's the story of a son: but what lies at the heart of the son is the mystery of the mother. And what lies at the mystery of the mother is the history of nation, colonization, war. Through his family's story, Viet Thanh Nguyen renders not only a powerful portrait of America but--perhaps more necessary in our current moment--also an uplifting act of mourning. Simultaneously raw and lucid, haunting and reasoned, A Man of Two Faces opens up groundbreaking ways to speak the nation's story and a family's pain."--Gina Apostol, author of La Tercera

"None of the usual adjectives apply to Viet Thanh Nguyen's memoir--it is beyond words like brilliant and heartbreaking, because the prose rejects that kind of easy summary. This book belongs with James Baldwin, Claude Brown, Maxine Hong Kingston, and other writers whose memoirs take apart 'the American Dream' with laser precision. Nguyen's tensile anger and evanescent memory is measure of the fundamental sadness of watching his family, and himself, in their dreams, set against the violence and history of this country."--Susan Straight, author of Mecca, finalist for the Kirkus Prize

Praise for Viet
Thanh Nguyen:

"A voice that
shakes the walls of the old literary comfort zone . . . May that voice keep
running like a purifying venom through the mainstream of our
self-regard--through the American dream of distancing ourselves from what we
continue to show ourselves to be."--Jonathan Dee, New Yorker, on The
Committed

"Equal parts Ellison's Invisible
Man and Chang-rae Lee's Henry Park, Nguyen's nameless narrator is a singular
literary creation, a complete original."--Junot Díaz, New York Times
Book Review (cover review), on The
Committed

"The narrator's
voice snaps you up. It's direct, vain, cranky, and slashing--a voice of outraged
intelligence. It's among the more memorable in recent American literature."--Dwight
Garner, New York Times, on The Committed

"Just as The
Sympathizer transformed the hulk of an old spy novel, The
Committed does the same with a tale of noir crime."--Ron
Charles, Washington Post

"The
Sympathizer and The Committed are, to borrow James
Wood's phrase for such novels, perpetual-motion machines, their exuberance
perhaps a suitable method given how vast a subject he aims to tackle. The
breathless voice and sprawling plots of these novels made me think of Midnight's
Children: manic language and impossible story suit the strange truth of
colonialism. Nguyen does Salman Rushdie one better by deploying the conventions
of genre fiction; he gently seduces the reader into two rambling, discursive
works passionately interested in war and violence, race and identity,
colonialism and history."--Rumaan Alam, New York Review of Books

"These two novels
constitute a powerful challenge to an enduring narrative of colonialism and
neo-colonialism. One waits to see what Nguyen, and the man of two faces, will
do next."--Aminatta Forna, Guardian, on The Committed and The
Sympathizer

"One of our great
chroniclers of displacement . . . All Nguyen's fiction is pervaded by a shared
intensity of vision, by stinging perceptions that drift like windblown ashes."--Joyce
Carol Oates, New Yorker

"A layered
immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a 'man of two minds'--and
two countries, Vietnam and the United States."--Pulitzer Prize Citation
for The Sympathizer

"Remarkable . . .
His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously
voiceless . . . Compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene, and le
Carré . . . An absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka
or Genet."--Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review (cover
review), on The Sympathizer

"Intelligent,
relentlessly paced and savagely funny . . . The voice of the double-agent
narrator, caustic yet disarmingly honest, etches itself on the memory."--Sam
Sacks, Wall Street Journal, "Best Books of the Year," on The
Sympathizer

"A fast-paced,
entertaining read . . . A much-needed Vietnamese perspective on the war."--Bill
Gates, Gates Notes, on The Sympathizer

"Extraordinary . .
. Surely a new classic of war fiction . . . I haven't read anything since
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably how
a patient tyrant, unmoored from all humane constraint, can reduce a man's mind
to liquid."--Ron Charles, Washington Post, on The
Sympathizer

"We've never had a
story quite like this one before . . . Mr. Nguyen is a master of the telling
ironic phrase and the biting detail, and the book pulses with Catch-22-style
absurdities."--Sarah Lyall, New York Times, on The
Sympathizer

"Beautifully
written and meaty . . . I had that kid-like feeling of being inside the book."--Claire
Messud, Boston Globe, on The Sympathizer

"Thrilling in its
virtuosity, as in its masterly exploitation of the espionage-thriller genre . .
. The book's (unnamed) narrator speaks in an audaciously postmodernist voice,
echoing not only Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison but the Dostoyevsky
of Notes from the Underground."--Joyce Carol Oates, New
Yorker, on The Sympathizer

"Gleaming and
uproarious, a dark comedy of confession filled with charlatans, delusionists
and shameless opportunists . . . The Sympathizer, like Graham
Greene's The Quiet American, examines American intentions, often
mixed with hubris, benevolence and ineptitude, that lead the country into
conflict."--Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, on The
Sympathizer

"Dazzling . . . A
fascinating exploration of personal identity, cultural identity, and what it
means to sympathize with two sides at once."--John Powers, Fresh Air,
NPR, "Books I Wish I'd Reviewed," on The Sympathizer

"As a writer,
[Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift―wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity―to
the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls 'a just memory' of
this war."―Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times, on Nothing
Ever Dies

"Nguyen's lucid,
arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G.
Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy."―Donna
Seaman, Booklist, on Nothing Ever Dies (starred
review)

"A beautiful
collection that deftly illustrates the experiences of the kinds of people our
country has, until recently, welcomed with open arms . . . An urgent, wonderful
collection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling--it can
bear witness to the lives of people who we can't afford to forget."--Michael
Schaub, NPR Books, on The Refugees

"This is an
important and incisive book written by a major writer with firsthand knowledge
of the human rights drama exploding on the international stage-and the talent
to give us inroads toward understanding it . . . It is refreshing and essential
to have this work from a writer who knows and feels the terrain on an
intellectual, emotional and cellular level-it shows . . . An exquisite book."--Megan
Mayhew Bergman, Washington Post, on The Refugees

"Confirms Nguyen
as an agile, trenchant writer, able to inhabit a number of contrary points of
view. And it whets your appetite for his next novel."--Michael
Upchurch, Seattle Times, on The Refugees

"A short-story
collection mostly plumbing the experience of boat-bound Vietnamese who escaped
to California . . . Ultimately, Nguyen enlarges empathy, the high ideal of
literature and the enemy of hate and fear."--Boris Kachka, New York,
on The Refugees

"The book we need
now . . . The most timely short story collection in recent memory . . .
Throughout, Nguyen demonstrates the richness of the refugee experience, while
also foregrounding the very real trauma that lies at its core."--Doree
Shafrir, BuzzFeed, on The Refugees