Howard Myers
asked
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I am in a history class and would like to know your feelings and opinions on the May Lai incident in 1968. Do you think all of war was brutal like that incident?
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Not all of war is brutal like this, but I think war inevitably produces brutal incidents like this. Whether or not we hear about them is another matter. War is by its nature both human and inhuman, and we can't pretend that we can conduct war without letting the inhuman out. The full explanation of why I think war is both human and inhuman, and why we are all capable of both humanity and inhumanity, is in my book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.
More Answered Questions
Cameron Redfern
asked
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I read Fatherland in my writing class bought the book. Than decided to buy Nothing Ever Dies, I got my mom to read The Sympathsizer, she loved it . My question is when we meet Man in the book , she is described as a woman , later she is referred to as he when the narrator and Boon are talking about Blood Brothers, I was wondering Why ? and thank you for your wonderful and thought provoking works
Mark
asked
Viet Thanh Nguyen:
I just finished Nothing Ever Dies, and there is a clear and valid argument about how the way we remember wars perpetuates the war machine. But global deaths from war have dropped precipitously over the past 40 years (see https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/). Is it possible we are also doing something right in how we remember wars that we can build on?
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