Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose debut novel “The Sympathizer” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016, is the next author to be featured by the Register Book Club.
Nguyen will appear in conversation about his work and life on Feb. 21 at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana. His short story collection “The Refugees” arrives on Tuesday.
Tickets to the event are $10 with all proceeds going to two non-profits – the Frida itself and a charity to be chosen by Nguyen.
Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1971 and immigrated to the United States as a child, first to Pennsylvania, and then to San Jose.
“The Sympathizer” is a literary novel with a character-driven thriller at its core. A Vietnamese military officer who flees South Vietnam during the fall of Saigon in April 1975 is a spy, and continues to spy on his fellow expatriates after settling in the United States.
“Surely a new classic of war fiction,” wrote Ron Charles in a review in the Washington Post. “(Nguyen) has wrapped a cerebral thriller around a desperate expat story that confront the existential dilemmas of our age.”
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize the book earned a few dozen additional honors including the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, and a spot on more than 30 lists of the best books of 2015.
Nguyen, who earned his doctorate in English at the University of California, Berkeley, is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English as well as a professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
“The Refugees” collects his short fiction, disparate stories linked by the common bond of their protagonists as people living in two worlds, never feeling quite at home in either.
The Register Book Club event at the Frida begins at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 21 and in addition to a conversation with Nguyen will conclude with a book signing.
Tickets are available at eventbrite.com/e/the-register-book-club-hosts-viet-thanh-nguyen-tickets-31666460235.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@scng.com
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