Review: The Boat by Nam Le

Format Read: PaperbackNumber of Pages: 271Release Date: 16 March 2010Publisher: VintageFormats Available: PaperbackPurchasing Info: Nam Le’s Website, The Book Depository, Good ReadsBook Blurb: A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling.

In the magnificent opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam — and what seems at first a satire of turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. “Cartagena” provides a …