Tragicomic memoir from Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer.
“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces”, begins Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel, The Sympathizer, the internationally acclaimed bestseller that was recently adapted into an HBO series starring Sandra Oh and Robert Downey Jr.
This duality is also at the heart of Viet’s highly original memoir, A Man of Two Faces, which details with sardonic wit and incisive analysis the double consciousness of a Vietnamese refugee growing up in North America.
Listen to the celebrated author, hailed as “a conscience of American literature” (The New Yorker), in conversation with Benjamin Law.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel, The Sympathizer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other awards. His most recent publication is A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial. His other books are The Committed, a short story collection, The Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies and Race and Resistance. He has also published Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his son, Ellison. He is a University Professor at the University of Southern California. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, he is also the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.
Benjamin Law is a journalist, columnist, TV screenwriter and author of The Family Law, Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East and Quarterly Essay 67: Moral Panic 101. The Family Law is an award-winning TV series for SBS that Benjamin created and co-wrote over three seasons. He is a weekly columnist for Good Weekend magazine.
This livestream will be open captioned.
