Non-Fiction#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Race and Resistance |
2002 |
Buy |
| Nothing Ever Dies |
2016 |
Buy |
| A Man of Two Faces |
2023 |
Buy |
| To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other |
2025 |
Buy |
Picture#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Chicken of the Sea |
2019 |
Buy |
Short Stories/Novellas#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Black-Eyed Women |
2017 |
Buy |
Standalone Novels#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| The Sympathizer |
2015 |
Buy |
| The Refugees |
2017 |
Buy |
The Sympathizer Reading Order#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Sympatisören |
2015 |
N/A |
| The Sympathizer |
2015 |
Buy |
| The Committed |
2020 |
Buy |
| Il Militante |
2021 |
N/A |
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and came to the United States as a refugee at age four. That biography runs through almost everything he has written, in fiction and non-fiction alike. The Sympathizer (2015) was his first novel and remains his most celebrated work, a satirical spy story narrated by a communist double agent that dismantles American mythology about the Vietnam War while building something genuinely strange and compelling.
He followed that with The Committed (2020), which picks up the narrator’s story in Paris and continues the satirical project of the first book. His non-fiction, including Nothing Ever Dies and A Man of Two Faces, explores similar territory through academic and personal lenses. The Refugees, a short story collection published the same year as his follow-up novel, is a quieter, more intimate look at the Vietnamese-American experience. He also co-wrote a children’s picture book with his son, Chicken of the Sea.
His body of work covers a remarkable range of registers, from dense literary satire to accessible children’s fiction, but the central concerns remain consistent: who gets to tell the story, and what does it cost to be forgotten.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many books has Viet Thanh Nguyen written?
Viet Thanh Nguyen has written twelve books across five series.
What was Viet Thanh Nguyen's first book?
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s first book is Race and Resistance, published in 2002.
What themes run through Viet Thanh Nguyen's writing?
His work returns repeatedly to the Vietnamese diaspora experience, the aftermath of the Vietnam War, questions of identity and belonging, and the way history gets told and retold depending on who holds the pen.