Archives par mot-clé : Viet Thanh Nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen : Nothing Ever Dies – Vietnam and the Memory of War [parution]

[ndlr] Le nouvel ouvrage de Viet Thanh Nguyen sur les mémoires et la guerre au Viêt-Nam. Présentation de l’éditeur.

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the bestselling novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations.

From a kaleidoscope of cultural forms—novels, memoirs, cemeteries, monuments, films, photography, museum exhibits, video games, souvenirs, and more—Nothing Ever Dies brings a comprehensive vision of the war into sharp focus. At stake are ethical questions about how the war should be remembered by participants that include not only Americans and Vietnamese but also Laotians, Cambodians, South Koreans, and Southeast Asian Americans. Too often, memorials valorize the experience of one’s own people above all else, honoring their sacrifices while demonizing the “enemy”—or, most often, ignoring combatants and civilians on the other side altogether. Visiting sites across the United States, Southeast Asia, and Korea, Viet Thanh Nguyen provides penetrating interpretations of the way memories of the war help to enable future wars or struggle to prevent them.

Drawing from this war, Nguyen offers a lesson for all wars by calling on us to recognize not only our shared humanity but our ever-present inhumanity. This is the only path to reconciliation with our foes, and with ourselves. Without reconciliation, war’s truth will be impossible to remember, and war’s trauma impossible to forget.

VietThanhNguyen_NothingEverDiesContents

  • Prologue
  • Just Memory
  • Ethics
    • 1. On Remembering One’s Own
    • 2. On Remembering Others
    • 3. On the Inhumanities
  • Industries
    • 4. On War Machines
    • 5. On Becoming Human
    • 6. On Asymmetry
  • Aesthetics
    • 7. On Victims and Voices
    • 8. On True War Stories
    • 9. On Powerful Memory
  • Just Forgetting
  • Epilogue
  • Notes
  • Works Cited
  • Acknowledgments
  • Credits
  • Index

Source : Harvard University Press

Réf. : Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies. Vietnam and the Memory of War, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2016, 374 p. ISBN : 9780674660342.

Photo “à la une ” : Viet Thanh Nguyen (Twitter)

Prix Pulitzer 2016 : Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathiser

[ndlr] Le Prix Pulitzer de la fiction 2016 a été décerné à l’écrivain et chercheur Viet Thanh Nguyen (Nguyễn Thanh Việt) pour son premier roman The Sympathizer (publié chez Grove Press, 2015) lors de la cérémonie de remise des prix à New York le 18 avril 2016.

VietThanhNguyen_TheSympathizer

A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties. In dialogue with but diametrically opposed to the narratives of the Vietnam War that have preceded it, this novel offers an important and unfamiliar new perspective on the war: that of a conflicted communist sympathizer.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s astonishing novel takes us inside the mind of this double agent, a man whose lofty ideals necessitate his betrayal of the people closest to him. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. His stories have appeared in Best New American Voices, TriQuarterly, Narrative, and the Chicago Tribune and he is the author of the academic book Race and Resistance. He teaches English and American Studies at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

Source : Pulitzer Price

Voir également :

  • Michelle Dean, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer: from overlooked to Pulitzer winner, The Guardian, 18/04/2016.

Photo “à la une”  : Viet Thanh Nguyen © Pulitzer board / handout / EPA