Viet Thanh Nguyen

I wouldn't turn it down.

But it's an interesting, you know, I could write a story about this.

The devil gives you a choice, you know, all this money and you suck at what you do, or you're really great at what you do, but you don't get the recognition.

Now, obviously, hopefully you want a sweet spot, but let's say those are your two choices.

What would you choose?

Okay.

So for me, the devil didn't literally appear, but it felt like that was a choice I was sitting down with when I wrote The Sympathizer.

And I'm going to write what I care about, and I don't care if I win any prizes or make any money out of that.

So that was my rejection of this institution of literature and art that had saved me because when I came as a refugee boy to the United States and I was watching my parents struggle,

They didn't have any time to spend with me because they were working to save their lives and our lives.

So what did I do?

I just read a lot of books.

I read stories.

I fell in love with literature.

You were always in the library, right?

I was always in the library.

We never had a single book in our house, not even the Bible.

I don't know why.

We were Catholic, not even the Bible.

So my parents would have never spent money on books.