Viet Thanh Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
[Nguyen] produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments,
and prisons that form ‘the identity of war’ in Vietnam, ‘a face
with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation’s
people.’ Nguyen draws insights from Levinas, Ricoeur, and other
philosophers, and his approach has affinities with that of
hybridists such as W. G. Sebald and Maggie Nelson. The book is also
notable for its inclusivity, addressing Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong,
and Korean experiences and the competition for narrative dominance
in bookstores and box offices.
*New Yorker*
In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen has written a powerful meditation on
the manner in which memories are produced, cultivated, even
empowered and subdued…He’s a lucid and robust voice for the
forgotten—forgotten people, forgotten places, and forgotten
memories most of all…Nothing Ever Dies is one man’s powerful
entreaty to a country which has seen nearly endless conflict (one
war running upon the next) for generations.
*PopMatters*
Readers will discover the roots of Nguyen’s powerful fiction in
this profoundly incisive and bracing investigation into the memory
of war and how war stories are shaped and disseminated…Ultimately,
Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode
of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just
stories of war and its perpetual legacy.
*Booklist (starred review)*
Nguyen’s work is a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember
and forget.
*Kirkus Reviews*
This thought-provoking book is recommended for all students of the
Vietnam War and those interested in historical memory.
*Library Journal*
[An] eloquent…narrative of the Vietnam War’s psychological impact
on combatants and civilians…This is primarily a work that comes to
grips with memory and identity through the arts…Nguyen succeeds in
delivering a potent critique of the war and revealing what the
memories of living have meant for the identities of the next
generation.
*Publishers Weekly*
Is there hope for an ethics of memory, or for peace? Nothing Ever
Dies reveals that, in our collective memories of conflict, we are
still fighting the Forever War. Nguyen’s distinctive voice blends
ideas with family history in a way that is original, unique,
exciting. A vitally important book.
*Maxine Hong Kingston, author of To Be a Poet*
Inspired by the author’s personal odyssey, informed by his
wide-ranging exploration of literature, film, and art, this is a
provocative and moving meditation on the ethics of remembering and
forgetting. Rooted in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, it speaks
to all who have been displaced by war and revolution, and carry
with them memories, whether their own or of others, private or
collective, that are freighted with nostalgia, guilt, and
trauma.
*Hue-Tam Ho Tai, editor of The Country of Memory: Remaking the
Past in Late Socialist Vietnam*
Nothing Ever Dies provides the fullest and best explanation of how
the Vietnam War has become so deeply inscribed into national
memory. Nguyen’s elegant prose is at once deeply personal,
sweepingly panoramic, and hauntingly evocative.
*Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the
Memory of Sand Creek*
Beautifully written, powerfully argued, thoughtful,
provocative.
*Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars,
1945-1990*
In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of
war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates
deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war…[An] important book,
which hits hard at self-serving myths.
*Literary Review*
By taking the reader on a sweeping and sobering global tour of
artifacts, places, art, texts, and monuments associated with
Vietnam, Nguyen argues that our cultural need to reflect accurately
upon our history and fully absorb its lessons is forever at war
with the impossibility of ever fully knowing the truth, or
retelling it accurately…Cautioning that we cannot remember what we
do not see, he lists the ways in which the U.S. has failed to fully
recognize its own role in Vietnam, let alone the Vietnamese
citizens it ostensibly went to Vietnam to protect…It’s fitting that
Nothing Ever Dies has emerged at a moment when the U.S. and most of
Europe are fiercely questioning America’s ability to reconcile with
the past. Nguyen might say that the only way we can truly
acknowledge the past is to contend with how fallible our memories
actually are.
*Vox*
Nothing Ever Dies is an account of humanity at its darkest, a realm
of war, memory, identity and pain that ventures from the jungles of
Vietnam to the killing fields of Cambodia.
*Los Angeles Times*
A penetrating analysis by the Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen on how
the Vietnam War has been remembered by the countries and people
that have been most affected by it.
*Listener*
In this elegantly written book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author
Nguyen offers a comprehensive, balanced analysis of how the Vietnam
War has been remembered and forgotten—both privately and
collectively…Examining a medley of cultural forms—novels,
monuments, cemeteries, souvenirs, video games, photography, museum
exhibits, and movies—Nguyen calls attention to the inequality in
the industrial production of memory and to the power of art to
disable future wars. One of the book’s most original—and perhaps
controversial—arguments is that to avoid simplifying the other,
people need to recognize both their humanity and their ever-present
inhumanity and those of others as well.
*Choice*
[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call
the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War…As a
writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit,
compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of
arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.
*Los Angeles Times*
Impassioned yet forensic.
*The Australian*
A necessary corrective to our way of thinking about our wars.
*The Intercept*
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