#the committed

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We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

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Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed picks up the story from his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer. Our nameless hero -- now a refugee in Paris -- is grappling with questions of identity and history, while also dealing with grittier concerns in the Parisian underworld. Check out Thúy Đinh’s review here.

-- Petra

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Whoever said the road to Hell was paved with good intentions had gotten it all wrong. If you looked more closely, you could see that the road to Hell was paved with excuses.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

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Eat too much, work too much, buy too much, read too little, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity. No, thank you. Don't you see that's how Americans take over the world? Not just through their army and their CIA and their World Bank, but through this infectious disease called the American Dream?

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

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Neither my homeland nor America could ever be described as charming. It was too moderate of an adjective for a country and a people as hot and hot-blooded as mine. We repulsed or seduced, but we never charmed. As for America, just think of Coca-Cola. That elixir is really something, embodying as it does the addictive, teeth-decaying sweetness of a capitalism that was no good for you no matter how it fizzled on the tongue.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

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Books meant something different when we returned to them later, leavened by life.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed