Review: A Man of Two Faces by Viet Tanh Nguyen

The West, often lauded for its generosity, had largely turned a blind eye to the plight of refugees until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 made it impossible to ignore. Yet, even as some Westerners lament their supposedly ‘overburdened’ states, author Viet Tanh Nguyen peels back the layers of this so-called magnanimity through his latest memoir – A Man of Two Faces. Taking the invaluable advice of writer Bharti Mukherjee, Nguyen has once again “go(ne) where it hurts.” After his 2016 Pulitzer winning book The Sympathizer, he writes a personal history that presents a much more complicated and often hypocritical reality.

The memoir is unusually written in second person (for most part) and is very much grounded in external reality having repercussions on the internal psyche. One might wonder if the use of “you” in this book is a result of war and its visible-to-the-eye consequences. The language feels like a director explaining the scene to his cast. These characters, all of whom make a part of who he has become, are equal parts archetypal. Is it a crucial distance then? For it is only towards the end that Nguyen assumes an ‘I’, as if gradually inching towards it. The tangible prose embodies his mental state, with emboldened letters, blotted out words, changing alignment and the paper mimicking his tone.

A Man of Two Faces lands in our hands at a moment when borders are tightening and debates over “who belongs” stir fear and suspicion across the globe. In DW News’s coverage of recent elections in France, a young voter casually mentioned that she preferred the far right to ensure her security against “a certain kind of person,” and that “ Sometimes they can be French, but often they are not. It’s really about uncontrolled immigration.”

Nguyen compares the West’s self-congratulatory narratives with its darker legacies — legacies that include not just the invention of the fork and other hallmarks of “civilization” but also the horrors of napalm, as immortalized by the haunting image of Phan Thị Kim Phúc. That iconic photograph, etched into global memory through the very tools of mechanical reproduction that the West perfected, is a reminder of how the same societies that claim to be overwhelmed by refugees are often the architects of the devastation that creates them. The West may pity Vietnam as a “country of war, country of victims,” but Nguyen is here to remind us that this pity is laced with the very arrogance and detachment that fuelled the violence in the first place.

The book, described aptly as “a memoir, a history, and a memorial,” defies the conventional expectations of the genre. It is more than a recounting of personal experiences. Nguyen’s life is intertwined with the broader Vietnamese-American experience. The narrative oscillates between past and present as Viet Tanh Nguyen juggles with the act of remembering itself – on how memories can be elusive and deceptive. He starts with recounting a particularly harrowing episode from his youth involving a home invasion, a moment that has haunted his family and shaped their understanding of fear and survival. One can sense Nguyen’s reluctance to write a memoir, due to the expectation that it focus solely on personal trauma. A Man of Two Faces, therefore, confronts the limitations imposed on writers of colour who are often pigeonholed into certain genres or topics.

Throughout, Nguyen introduces the idea of “caring for memories.” This concept is explored both as a personal endeavour and a literary one. The memoir is not just a retelling of events but an exploration of how memories are processed, altered, and sometimes repressed. In a recent interview, he admits to a long-standing resistance to writing a memoir, initially dismissing his life as unremarkable compared to their parents’ more dramatic histories. However, the pandemic catalysed a period of introspection and writing, resulting in this book. It unintentionally highlights how lockdown has influenced literature, making it increasingly introspective and autofictional, with lived experience now often prioritized over imaginative storytelling.

Nguyen’s dark humour comes to the fore as he calls writing this novel — a “minor revenge on Hollywood”— about the Vietnam War. It’s a revenge that, despite his cackling, comes with a bitter edge, for Nguyen knows that no matter how sharp his words, they will never reach the millions who consume Hollywood’s distorted fantasies of that war. The joke, as he dryly notes, is on him, and by extension, on all those who dare to challenge dominant narratives. While his novel might be a masterpiece read by a discerning few, it will never compete with the mass appeal of a poorly made Hollywood film. The real victims of this disparity? The Vietnamese, and every Other who exists only as a ghost in the American imagination, their stories overshadowed by the bright lights of the silver screen.

The author’s use of cinema as a metaphor for memory is particularly powerful. He imagines his parents’ lives as a film, complete with a soundtrack by Trịnh Công Sơn and direction by Wong Kar-wai. A Man of Two Faces continues its sharp critique of political and cultural landscapes, moving from the West’s complicated relationship with refugees to the suffocating control of artistic expression in his native Vietnam.

Nguyen’s true home, as he reveals, is not a physical place but the realm of language and writing — a space where freedom is paramount. Yet, how can one consider a country home when its government censors the very thing that defines that home? For Nguyen, the Vietnamese government’s rigid control over literature and history makes it impossible to feel at home in a land that stifles creative freedom. This fundamentalism, as he calls it, is not just political; it’s an assault on the human spirit, on the ability to express the complex, often conflicting truths of the past and present.

In a rare, fleeting moment of openness during the 1980s, the Vietnamese government briefly allowed writers to publish works that dared to tell these truths. Nguyễn Huy Thiệp, celebrated as the best short story writer of his generation, broke the silence with The General Retires and Other Stories. Dương Thu Hương, a war veteran and former party member, followed suit with Paradise of the Blind and Novel Without a Name. Her works confronted the disastrous land reforms of the 1950s and the disillusionment of Vietnamese sent as guest workers to Eastern Europe.

READ MORE: Viet Thanh Nguyen — “We choose to remember and forget things ”

For Nguyen, the pinnacle of Vietnamese war literature is Bảo Ninh’s The Sorrow of War. Written by a northern veteran who barely survived the conflict, it captures the essence of war’s true horrors. Nguyen acknowledges the profound influence of Ninh’s work on his own writing, to tell a story that refuses to conform to a single, sanitised version of history.

The author also reflects on his career as a writer. He recounts his early days at UC Berkeley, his struggles with self-perception, and the influence of authors like Maxine Hong Kingston. He wanted to explore the self as both “reader” and “text.” Nguyen confronts his vulnerabilities and history, and describes growing up with a dual identity, just like he did in The Sympathizer. He felt like an American spy in his Vietnamese household and a Vietnamese spy in the American world. This sense of duality is a common experience for many immigrants, refugees, and marginalized individuals – a feeling of being both insider and outsider.

He points out that refugees often do not choose to come to the United States but are driven there by circumstances, often as a result of American policies. In contrast, the immigrant experience is more closely tied to the American mythology of the “land of opportunity.”

Nguyen’s exploration of his own memories — of his parents, of the house by the freeway in San José, of the disorienting transition from a Vietnamese homeland to an American existence — feels like a counterpoint to the anger and fear that fuel today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. In a world where Trump’s promises of mass deportations and travel bans are met with cheers from some quarters and UK burns in anti-immigration riots over misinformation, Nguyen’s reflections on the refugee experience serve as a timely reminder of what’s at stake. His parents, refugees who bought their home in cash, defied the stereotype of the immigrant as a drain on society. In one particularly striking moment, Nguyen reflects on how his family bought their house in cash—an immigrant dream fulfilled, but one tinged with the bittersweet reality of being outsiders in a place that never truly felt like home.

Nguyen’s memoir reminds us that behind every headline, every statistic, there are real people with real stories — stories that, like his parents’, deserve to be told in all their complexity and humanity.

Pranavi Sharma writes on books and culture. She lives in New Delhi.