Pulitzer Prize Winning Novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen was recently named this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, “The Sympathizer.” Unlike almost all other American books or films about the Vietnam war, the novel’s main characters are Vietnamese, but the book’s protagonist is not clearly defined. He’s half Vietnamese and half European. He was educated in Southern California and is a double agent.

Nguyen himself was four years old when Saigon fell, and his family escaped and came to the United States as refugees in 1975. He was raised in Southern California and is now a professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC.