The Boat » (Reprint)

Nam Le was born in Vietnam, and raised in Australia. His work has appeared in Zoetrope, A Public Space, One Story, Conjunctions, and the Pushcart Prize and Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies. Currently the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, he divides his time between Australia and the United States.

www.namleonline.com

The seven stories in Nam Le's masterful collection The Boat take us across the globe, from the slums of Colombia to Iowa City; from the streets of Tehran to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea. They guide us to the heart of what it means to be human — and herald the arrival of a remarkable new writer.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

…[a] remarkable collection…Mr. Le not only writes with an authority and poise rare even among longtime authors, but he also demonstrates an intuitive, gut-level ability to convey the psychological conflicts people experience when they find their own hopes and ambitions slamming up against familial expectations or the brute facts of history…his sympathy for his characters and his ability to write with both lyricism and emotional urgency lend his portraits enormous visceral power.

Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice 3

Cartagena 29

Meeting Elise 68

Halflead Bay 94

Hiroshima 163

Tehran Calling 178

The Boat 230