"The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning 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...

Brainwashed by the school propaganda at the end of Stalin's rule, Yakov Grinshpun becomes an ardent young patriot. Unable to reconcile the communist ideals with the anti-Semitism he encounters throughout his school years, Yakov dreams of a way to escape the shell of propaganda. A move from a shtetl to college in the city of Odessa opens his eyes to the realities of Soviet life: lack of freedom, harsh economic conditions, and the double life he is...