A Man of Two Faces
A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
Grove Atlantic
October 3, 2023
Praise for A Man of Two Faces:
A Man of Two Faces is the highly original new nonfiction work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen.
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, cultural power, 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 Mê 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 José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA™️. 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 SàiGòn 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.
Resonant in its emotions and clear in its thinking, 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.
Foreign Sales:
Corsair / U.K.
Belfond / France
20 | 20 Editora / Portugal
Marco Polo Press / Taiwan
Neri Pozza Editore / Italy
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, and Bookpage
"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
“A kaleidoscopic memoir . . . Nguyen indisputably captures
the workings of a quicksilver and penetrating mind….A
fragmentary reflection on the refugee experience, at once
lyrical and biting, by one of our leading writers.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“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
“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.”
—Booklist, starred review
“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.”
—Datebook
“Formally audacious…a vision of storytelling as not only internal work, but also
as political work….Sharp and affecting, this book is both: a weapon, a lamentation.”
—The Washington Post
“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.
—The New York Times
Praise for Viet Thanh Nguyen:
Praise for The Sympathizer, Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
“A cerebral thriller [wrapped] around a desperate expat story that confronts the existential
dilemmas of our age. Startlingly insightful and perilously candid.”
— The Washington Post
“This tragicomic novel reaches beyond its historical context to illuminate...universal
themes. Nguyen’s skill...compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene and le Carre.”
— New York Times Book Review
“A closely written novel....Both chilling and funny, and a worthy addition
to the library of first-rate novels about the Vietnam War.”
— Kirkus, starred review
“Between plot peaks, Nguyen roams wildly, the better to explore many fascinating tangents.
Nguyen’s prose is often like a feverish, frenzied dream, a profuse and lively stream of images
sparking off the page...this remarkable, rollicking read by a Vietnamese immigrant
heralds an exciting new voice in American literature.”
— The Seattle Times
“The great achievement of The Sympathizer is that it gives the Vietnamese a voice and demands
that we pay attention ... There are so many passages to admire. Mr. Nguyen is a master of the
telling ironic phrase and the biting detail, and the book pulses with Catch-22-style absurdities”
— The New York Times
“Nguyen’s novel enlivens debate about history and human
nature... [with] a poignant, often mirthful voice.”
— Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review
Praise for The Committed
“The novel draws its true enchantment – and its immense power – from
the propulsive, wide-ranging intelligence of our narrator… this tormented
double agent is back for another serving of ghostcolonial discontent in
Nguyen’s showstopper sequel.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“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.”
—The New Yorker
“It contains brilliant writing, perverse insights and Tarantino-esque action
sequences. Its wit is bitter; its pain is palpable.”
—The Seattle Times
"An exhilarating roller-coaster ride filled with violence, hidden identity, and
meditations on whether the colonized can ever be free...Nguyen continues to delight."
—Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review
"The conflicted spy of Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer returns,
embroiled in Paris’s criminal underworld . . . Nguyen is deft at balancing his hero’s
existential despair with the lurid glow of a crime saga. A quirky intellectual crime
story that highlights the Vietnam War’s complex legacy."
–Kirkus, Starred Review
"Undeniably erudite and culturally fluent as ever—interweaving history,
philosophy, political treatise, theology, even literary criticism—Nguyen
effortlessly enhances the story with snarky commentary, sly judgments, and
plenty of wink-wink-nod-nod posturing to entertain committed readers.”
—Booklist Magazine