MIDTOWN May 2026 — A Man of Two Faces, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

📖 Why this book? 📖

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK
AWARD

The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide

With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a
son.

Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library

💠 What can I expect? 💠

We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.

💬 We catch up socially;
🧊 we recommend a book or author, and
📕 we start our book discussion at 7pm.

👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜

◾️A snack or drink to share
◾️$5 (cash or Venmo *8913)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄

✴️ Event Fee Details ✴️

The $5 is split between our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.

You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon *8913) or bring cash.

However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns

Thanks, and see you all soon!

📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚

At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột and come to the USA as refugees.

After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José.

But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICATM. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun.

Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stir-ring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are re-opening.

Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life storv of one of the most original and important writers working today.