"American ignorance of Vietnamese history, culture and politics helped draw the United States into a war and a country that it did not comprehend. This pattern of ignorance arguably continues today, both in terms of what Americans continue to ignore about Vietnam and what Americans refuse to know about the Middle East. Literature plays an important role as a corrective to this ignorance." — Viet Thanh Nguyen, the author of The Sympathizer

The great Vietnam war novel was not written by an American (NYT)