Viet Thanh Nguyen, has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He won the prize for his book, “The Sympathizer.” The Pulitzer judges described Nguyen’s book as an immigrant’s story told through the voice of “a man of two minds, and two countries” The book is set in both Vietnam, where the author was born, and the United States, where he was raised. Critics have praised “The Sympathizer” as an exciting spy story with emotional depth and humor. It tells about a group of South Vietnamese army officers who escape to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War. Among them is a captain who is secretly loyal to the Viet Cong. He reports to Viet Cong officials about the group and their lives in Los Angeles. Nguyen told the Los Angeles Times that “The Sympathizer” is a “confession from one Vietnamese to another.” Nguyen came to the United States with his family in 1975 when he was very young. They lived for several years in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania.
