A MAN OF TWO FACES

'A triumphant memoir' Cathy Park Hong author of MINOR FEELINGS finalist for the Pulitzer PrizeThe highly original blistering and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer which has now sold over one million copies worldwideWith insight humour formal invention and lyricism in A Man of Two Faces Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood colonization and ideas about Vietnam and America writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.At the age of four Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thu?t and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA™. One Christmas Eve when Nguyen is nine while watching cartoons at home he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store the SàiGòn M?i a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later as a teenager the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam and ultimately visits her he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age he worries increasingly about their comfort and care and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.Resonant in its emotions and clear in its thinking about cultural power A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory the promises America so readily makes and breaks and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.