The Refugees
Viet Thanh Nguyen · 2017
Vietnamese refugees and their ghosts. Nguyen writes displacement with the authority of lived experience.
The case against
Written across two decades, and the seams show: careful, low-temperature realist stories that tend to close on soft epiphanies. Readers arriving from The Sympathizer's manic, voice-driven high wire will find this register surprisingly muted, even cautious. Ghosts open the collection promisingly; too many later stories settle for the well-made shape an MFA workshop would approve.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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