It was the first time that Geffard heard about Nam's

In 2007, travelling in France in the company of Francis Geffard, his editor at Albin Michel, writer Charles D'Ambrosio, author of "The dead fish Museum", took the train to read the news written by his students at the University of Iowa. One of them, entitled "Love, honour, compassion, pride, Compassion, the Sacrifice", the hit so he the spent in his travel companion. It was the first time that Geffard heard about Nam's. And the text he appeared if strong that he immediately took contact with the young man and he signed a contract even before the collection appear in the United States.

Good pick. Its release in May 2008, there is an avalanche of praise. Not less than three enthusiastic reviews in the single "New York Times", including one signed by the formidable Michiko Kakutani, who has the reputation to make and undo the reputations. The novelist William Boyd publicly welcomed this collection "breathtaking, powerful, moving also remarkable that shocking." The most prestigious awards it are: the National Book Foundation, which rewards each year five authors of less than thirty years, the Dylan Thomas International Prize for the best English-language author and the Prime Minister Award in Australia. The book has already been translated in fifteen countries.

The new opens the book tells the story of a young Vietnamese exiled in Iowa. He must make the next day a new to the Director of the writing workshop but is struck by the symptom of the blank page. It was then that his father came to Australia unexpectedly and tells him his life. After the My Lai massacre, which he réchappa hiding under the body of his mother dead, his father entered the sud-vietnamienne army to fight alongside his former American executioners. A son who asked him why he joined the U.S. Army replied: "I felt that of hate, but I had enough for everyone." After the victory of the Communists, he sent two years in re-education camp, then escapes in a boat which fails in Malaysia, where the boat people are collected in waiting for a final destination. This will be the Australia.

The ethnic temptation

Until the outbreak of his father, the apprentice writer refused to write "ethnic" stories, up by the image of the young Harvard graduate who had agreed to ask in traditional Nigerian dress to promote his book. His friends laugh at him: "You could operate the Vietnamese seam at bottom." Instead, you prefer to write about lesbian ghouls, Colombian gunmen, orphans in Hiroshima - not to mention New York painters and their hemorrhoids. "Finally, the young man will yield to the temptation of ethnic and write Jet this news is very satisfied. but the surprising fate will be in the hands of his father...

This news is highly autobiographical. Born in 1978, Nam the fled the Viet Nam boat with his parents at the age of three months, experienced the camps of Malaysia, has lived in Australia, where he found reading in the comfort of the library where her parents, forced to do several jobs and too poor to keep left, he and his brother.

Graduate, he was briefly solicitor before any map for writing and Iowa. After having written a novel of 700 pages it deems too bad to be shown, Nam writes news taking place in countries, under ls-studies or at very different times: young Colombian killers for breach of ban in "Cartagena". a New York painter reached of a colon cancer in terminal which will review her daughter has become an internationally renowned cellist after seventeen years of separation in "Review Elise"; a young Australian who falls in the rets of a bimbo whose boyfriend, a dangerous raw, has a reputation for slaughter ruthless rivals in "halflead bay"; a young American depressed following a sorrow of love will find a friend in Iran in "Here Tehran"; a small Japanese during the second world war in "Hiroshima". Only the seventh and last new which deals with the boat people, looping the loop, back to the ethnic ground and his personal history. It is called "The boat" and gives his title to the collection.

Such an approach could appear disjointed or dummy, an attempt to virtuoso intended to show the range of his talent. Or to delay the time to confront the major topic that every writer is supposed to be him. But Nam the avoided this trap the authenticity and the seriousness of tone, remarkable for a young writer. He takes his characters at a time key to their existence, confronted with death, anxiety or disappearance of a loved one. Despite their diversity, they embody the human being that it is more noble and more fragile. It is in this that they affect us. With "The boat", Nam maintains good cap, it still face large offshore. It was announced a novel.