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As the scream of artillery shells gets ever louder, a mother makes a decision. She grasps her two biological sons by the hand, turns to look at her adopted daughter Tuyet, and flees home. Tuyet is 16, left behind “to guard the family property” as the Communist army of North Vietnam marches on the South. The family think they will return soon. It is 1975, and Viet Thanh Nyugen – one of those fleeing sons – is just four. It will be almost 30 years until he sees his sister again.
Such moments run like scars across A Man of Two Faces, Nguyen’s moving, polemical and ultimately uneven memoir about his family’s journey to and through…