The Mill Valley Library is thrilled to present an evening with Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) in honor of his new nonfiction book, To Save and to Destroy in partnership with Book Passage Corte Madera. To Save and to Destroy is an unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity. In conversation with Chronicle columnist Soleil Ho.

Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans.

The essays in To Save and to Destroy, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing? 

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer and of Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award. A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the first Asian American member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Born in Vietnam, Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee with his parents and grew up in San Jose, CA, where his family opened the city's second Vietnamese grocery store. He lives in Pasadena, CA.

Soleil Ho is an opinion columnist and cultural critic at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The bookseller for this program is Book Passage Corte Madera. 

Viet Thanh Nguyen photo by Hopper Stone, SMPSP

Important Notice: The Library will close at 5pm on the day of the event and reopen at 6pm for a free wine reception.  At 6:15pm, we will let people in, first come, first served. Late arriving pre-registered guests will have to join the existing waitlist line. 

This event is for adults and teens. No one younger will be admitted.