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.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.
Praise for A Man of Two Faces:
**LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD**
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
'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
'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 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 ourcurrent 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 andhistory of this country.'-Susan Straight, author of Mecca, finalist for the Kirkus Prize
Praise for Viet Thanh Nguyen:
'A voice thatshakes the walls of the old literary comfort zone . . . May that voice keeprunning like a purifying venom through the mainstream of ourself-regard-through the American dream of distancing ourselves from what wecontinue to show ourselves to be.'-Jonathan Dee, New Yorker, on TheCommitted
'Equal parts Ellison's InvisibleMan and Chang-rae Lee's Henry Park, Nguyen's nameless narrator is a singularliterary creation, a complete original.'-Junot Diaz, New York Times Book Review (cover review), on TheCommitted
'The narrator'svoice snaps you up. It's direct, vain, cranky, and slashing-a voice of outragedintelligence. It's among the more memorable in recent American literature.'-DwightGarner, New York Times, on The Committed
'Just as TheSympathizer transformed the hulk of an old spy novel, TheCommitted does the same with a tale of noir crime.'-RonCharles, Washington Post
' TheSympathizer and The Committed are, to borrow JamesWood's phrase for such novels, perpetual-motion machines, their exuberanceperhaps a suitable method given how vast a subject he aims to tackle. Thebreathless voice and sprawling plots of these novels made me think of Midnight'sChildren : manic language and impossible story suit the strange truth ofcolonialism. Nguyen does Salman Rushdie one better by deploying the conventionsof genre fiction; he gently seduces the reader into two rambling, discursiveworks passionately interested in war and violence, race and identity,colonialism and history.'-Rumaan Alam, New York Review of Books
'These two novelsconstitute a powerful challenge to an enduring narrative of colonialism andneo-colonialism. One waits to see what Nguyen, and the man of two faces, willdo next.'-Aminatta Forna, Guardian, on The Committed and TheSympathizer
'One of our greatchroniclers of displacement . . . All Nguyen's fiction is pervaded by a sharedintensity of vision, by stinging perceptions that drift like windblown ashes.'-JoyceCarol Oates, New Yorker
'A layeredimmigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a `man of two minds'-andtwo countries, Vietnam and the United States.'-Pulitzer Prize Citationfor The Sympathizer
'Remarkable . . .His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previouslyvoiceless . . . Compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene, and leCarre . . . An absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafkaor Genet.'-Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review (coverreview), on The Sympathizer
'Intelligent,relentlessly paced and savagely funny . . . The voice of the double-agentnarrator, caustic yet disarmingly honest, etches itself on the memory.'-SamSacks, Wall Street Journal, 'Best Books of the Year,' on TheSympathizer
'A fast-paced,entertaining read . . . A much-needed Vietnamese perspective on the war.'-BillGates, Gates Notes, on The Sympathizer
'Extraordinary . .. Surely a new classic of war fiction . . . I haven't read anything sinceOrwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably howa patient tyrant, unmoored from all humane constraint, can reduce a man's mindto liquid.'-Ron Charles, Washington Post, on TheSympathizer
'We've never had astory quite like this one before . . . Mr. Nguyen is a master of the tellingironic phrase and the biting detail, and the book pulses with Catch-22 -styleabsurdities.'-Sarah Lyall, New York Times, on TheSympathizer
'Beautifullywritten and meaty . . . I had that kid-like feeling of being inside the book.'-ClaireMessud, Boston Globe, on The Sympathizer
'Thrilling in itsvirtuosity, 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 Dostoyevskyof Notes from the Underground .'-Joyce Carol Oates, NewYorker, on The Sympathizer
'Gleaming anduproarious, a dark comedy of confession filled with charlatans, delusionistsand shameless opportunists . . . The Sympathizer, like GrahamGreene's The Quiet American, examines American intentions, oftenmixed with hubris, benevolence and ineptitude, that lead the country intoconflict.'-Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, on TheSympathizer
'Dazzling . . . Afascinating exploration of personal identity, cultural identity, and what itmeans 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―tothe impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls `a just memory' ofthis war.'―Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times, on NothingEver 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.'―DonnaSeaman, Booklist, on Nothing Ever Dies (starred review)
'A beautiful collection that deftly illustrates the experiences of the kinds of people ourcountry has, until recently, welcomed with open arms . . . An urgent, wonderfulcollection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling-it canbear witness to the lives of people who we can't afford to forget.'-MichaelSchaub, NPR Books, on The Refugees
'This is animportant and incisive book written by a major writer with firsthand knowledgeof the human rights drama exploding on the international stage-and the talentto give us inroads toward understanding it . . . It is refreshing and essentialto have this work from a writer who knows and feels the terrain on anintellectual, emotional and cellular level-it shows . . . An exquisite book.'-MeganMayhew Bergman, Washington Post, on The Refugees
'Confirms Nguyenas an agile, trenchant writer, able to inhabit a number of contrary points ofview. And it whets your appetite for his next novel.'-MichaelUpchurch, Seattle Times, on The Refugees
'A short-storycollection mostly plumbing the experience of boat-bound Vietnamese who escapedto California . . . Ultimately, Nguyen enlarges empathy, the high ideal ofliterature and the enemy of hate and fear.'-Boris Kachka, New York,on The Refugees
'The book we neednow . . . The most timely short story collection in recent memory . . .Throughout, Nguyen demonstrates the richness of the refugee experience, whilealso foregrounding the very real trauma that lies at its core.'-DoreeShafrir, BuzzFeed, on The Refugees
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.
Praise for A Man of Two Faces:
**LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD**
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
'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
'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 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 ourcurrent 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 andhistory of this country.'-Susan Straight, author of Mecca, finalist for the Kirkus Prize
Praise for Viet Thanh Nguyen:
'A voice thatshakes the walls of the old literary comfort zone . . . May that voice keeprunning like a purifying venom through the mainstream of ourself-regard-through the American dream of distancing ourselves from what wecontinue to show ourselves to be.'-Jonathan Dee, New Yorker, on TheCommitted
'Equal parts Ellison's InvisibleMan and Chang-rae Lee's Henry Park, Nguyen's nameless narrator is a singularliterary creation, a complete original.'-Junot Diaz, New York Times Book Review (cover review), on TheCommitted
'The narrator'svoice snaps you up. It's direct, vain, cranky, and slashing-a voice of outragedintelligence. It's among the more memorable in recent American literature.'-DwightGarner, New York Times, on The Committed
'Just as TheSympathizer transformed the hulk of an old spy novel, TheCommitted does the same with a tale of noir crime.'-RonCharles, Washington Post
' TheSympathizer and The Committed are, to borrow JamesWood's phrase for such novels, perpetual-motion machines, their exuberanceperhaps a suitable method given how vast a subject he aims to tackle. Thebreathless voice and sprawling plots of these novels made me think of Midnight'sChildren : manic language and impossible story suit the strange truth ofcolonialism. Nguyen does Salman Rushdie one better by deploying the conventionsof genre fiction; he gently seduces the reader into two rambling, discursiveworks passionately interested in war and violence, race and identity,colonialism and history.'-Rumaan Alam, New York Review of Books
'These two novelsconstitute a powerful challenge to an enduring narrative of colonialism andneo-colonialism. One waits to see what Nguyen, and the man of two faces, willdo next.'-Aminatta Forna, Guardian, on The Committed and TheSympathizer
'One of our greatchroniclers of displacement . . . All Nguyen's fiction is pervaded by a sharedintensity of vision, by stinging perceptions that drift like windblown ashes.'-JoyceCarol Oates, New Yorker
'A layeredimmigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a `man of two minds'-andtwo countries, Vietnam and the United States.'-Pulitzer Prize Citationfor The Sympathizer
'Remarkable . . .His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previouslyvoiceless . . . Compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene, and leCarre . . . An absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafkaor Genet.'-Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review (coverreview), on The Sympathizer
'Intelligent,relentlessly paced and savagely funny . . . The voice of the double-agentnarrator, caustic yet disarmingly honest, etches itself on the memory.'-SamSacks, Wall Street Journal, 'Best Books of the Year,' on TheSympathizer
'A fast-paced,entertaining read . . . A much-needed Vietnamese perspective on the war.'-BillGates, Gates Notes, on The Sympathizer
'Extraordinary . .. Surely a new classic of war fiction . . . I haven't read anything sinceOrwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably howa patient tyrant, unmoored from all humane constraint, can reduce a man's mindto liquid.'-Ron Charles, Washington Post, on TheSympathizer
'We've never had astory quite like this one before . . . Mr. Nguyen is a master of the tellingironic phrase and the biting detail, and the book pulses with Catch-22 -styleabsurdities.'-Sarah Lyall, New York Times, on TheSympathizer
'Beautifullywritten and meaty . . . I had that kid-like feeling of being inside the book.'-ClaireMessud, Boston Globe, on The Sympathizer
'Thrilling in itsvirtuosity, 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 Dostoyevskyof Notes from the Underground .'-Joyce Carol Oates, NewYorker, on The Sympathizer
'Gleaming anduproarious, a dark comedy of confession filled with charlatans, delusionistsand shameless opportunists . . . The Sympathizer, like GrahamGreene's The Quiet American, examines American intentions, oftenmixed with hubris, benevolence and ineptitude, that lead the country intoconflict.'-Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, on TheSympathizer
'Dazzling . . . Afascinating exploration of personal identity, cultural identity, and what itmeans 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―tothe impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls `a just memory' ofthis war.'―Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times, on NothingEver 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.'―DonnaSeaman, Booklist, on Nothing Ever Dies (starred review)
'A beautiful collection that deftly illustrates the experiences of the kinds of people ourcountry has, until recently, welcomed with open arms . . . An urgent, wonderfulcollection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling-it canbear witness to the lives of people who we can't afford to forget.'-MichaelSchaub, NPR Books, on The Refugees
'This is animportant and incisive book written by a major writer with firsthand knowledgeof the human rights drama exploding on the international stage-and the talentto give us inroads toward understanding it . . . It is refreshing and essentialto have this work from a writer who knows and feels the terrain on anintellectual, emotional and cellular level-it shows . . . An exquisite book.'-MeganMayhew Bergman, Washington Post, on The Refugees
'Confirms Nguyenas an agile, trenchant writer, able to inhabit a number of contrary points ofview. And it whets your appetite for his next novel.'-MichaelUpchurch, Seattle Times, on The Refugees
'A short-storycollection mostly plumbing the experience of boat-bound Vietnamese who escapedto California . . . Ultimately, Nguyen enlarges empathy, the high ideal ofliterature and the enemy of hate and fear.'-Boris Kachka, New York,on The Refugees
'The book we neednow . . . The most timely short story collection in recent memory . . .Throughout, Nguyen demonstrates the richness of the refugee experience, whilealso foregrounding the very real trauma that lies at its core.'-DoreeShafrir, BuzzFeed, on The Refugees
Additional Information
- SKN: 903933
- ID: F4258A42
- UPC: 9780802160508
- MFR Number: 2160508
- Ship to Quebec: No
- Toysrus Recommended Age: 12 - 18 years
- Language: English
Assembly
- Item Height: 1.00 inches
- Item Length: 9.00 inches
- Item Weight: 1.19 lbs
- Item Width: 6.00 inches
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SKN: 903933
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