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Mar 11, 2017lukasevansherman rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
"We're revolutionaries, and revolutionaries can never be innocent. We know too much and have done too much." Impressive and provocative debut novel by Vietnamese-born, American-based writer Viet Thahn Nguyen. There have been so many films and books about Vietnam, but as I was reading this, I realized almost all of those, even anti-war ones, were from the American perspective. So if readers find if "heavy-handed" or lacking in humor or hard to get past page 5 (really?), maybe they're the problem. The book, narrated by a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist agent, is about more than just the war, but about the conflicted relationship between the Vietnamese and the Americans, racial identity, and the effect of politics on the individual (I"m not sure how you write a novel about Vietnam that isn't political.). Nguyen is a vital new voice in fiction and I look forward to reading his latest book, "The Refugees." "Sometimes I dreamed of trying to pull a mask off my face, only to realize that the mask was my face."