Viet Thanh Nguyen's Reading List

The author, most recently, of "The Refugees" says the Star Wars stories are relevant to our age, "where most people identify with the rebels but so many in fact are complicit with the Empire."

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By the Book: Viet Thanh Nguyen (2017)

NYT By the Book column (2017-01-30).

Source: www.nytimes.com

The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

Kia Corthron · Buy on Amazon

"This big, ambitious, challenging novel should have gotten much more attention. It tells the 20th-century history of the United States through the intersecting lives of two white brothers and two black brothers."

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison · 1952 · Buy on Amazon

"hearing Joe Morton's stupendous performance was like encountering the novel for the first time, again. The Morton version is absolutely riveting."

The Land at the End of the World

António Lobo Antunes · Buy on Amazon

"Every morning I would read two or three pages of its magnificent prose, dense with striking and unexpected imagery, until the moment arrived when I was so seized by the novel's spirit that I was motivated to turn to my own."

The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston · Buy on Amazon

"I find the book endlessly rewarding to teach, because it's so rich and layered and still relevant to the lives of students."

Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson · 1993 · Buy on Amazon

"It takes place in the future but is really about our eternal human strengths and weaknesses. I like it when literature gets political."

Night Sky With Exit Wounds

Ocean Vuong · Buy on Amazon

"most recently the excellent volumes "Night Sky With Exit Wounds," by Ocean Vuong, and "Hardly War," by Don Mee Choi."

Look

Solmaz Sharif · Buy on Amazon

"a work of poetry that is about war and language, drawing partially from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms."

Favorite books (2023)

Favorite books recommended by Viet Thanh Nguyen, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/viet-thanh-nguyen-favorite-books/.

Source: radicalreads.com

The Wretched of the Earth

Frantz Fanon (also rec’d by The Black Panther Party , Colin Kaepernick , Nipsey Hussle, Noname & Rage Against The Machine ) · Buy on Amazon

"The Committed refers to numerous literary and political works of commitment, most of all to The Wretched of the Earth , Frantz Fanon’s classic account of the Algerian revolt against the French and passionate call for violent revolution by subjugated peoples. The Martinique-born political philosopher himself became a committed revolutionary and died young, leaving a remarkable body of work."

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