Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and academic Viet Thanh Nguyen talks to John Wilson about his formative influences and experiences. A child refugee, he moved to the United States with his family at the end of the Vietnam War. He is best known for his 2015 debut novel The Sympathizer which has been translated into 30 languages, has sold more than a million copies worldwide, and was adapted as an HBO television series in 2024. Viet Thanh Nguyen has written widely about conflict, migration and identity in his fiction and, more recently, in his memoir A Man Of Two Faces. A professor of English and American Studies, he teaches at the University of Southern California.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Archive used:

News archive from Newsdesk, BBC Radio 4, 29 & 30 April 1975
Clips from Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, 1979
Extract from The Quiet American, Graham Greene, 1955
Trailer for The Sympathizer, HBO, 2024