Buy new:

$138.00

$1.29 delivery 31 May - 7 June. Details

Or fastest delivery 13 - 20 May. Details

Select delivery location

Usually dispatched within 2 to 3 weeks

$$138.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

University Bookstore Boston USA

Ships from

University Bookstore Boston USA

Sold by

University Bookstore Boston USA

Sold by

University Bookstore Boston USA

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Follow the author

Nam Le

Follow

The Boat Paperback – 19 February 2009

by Nam Le (Author)

121

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$138.00","priceAmount":138.00,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"138","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"00","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"gp6QhdPczQesfF%2BEvkyaRM3NiY5iBo%2FeWQO%2FCOzGCqn8l5UuzBnDgPXptd7QPePuLQh2ewFEQLjFwJ6WI3OlZptYYApFMnC9QOQrJRoLx4i7zj3KUlKWGNyZpDUBu9iQTDuLEOdBwHoiGwZaz%2BCPI%2BBM98sHaKwIU7ksC0i1lhlYw8lcljpAEUtIOHZtPSql","locale":"en-AU","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

A remarkable debut collection from a prize-winning author

Report an issue with this product

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Canongate Books Ltd
Publication date

19 February 2009
Dimensions

12.9 x 1.8 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

1847671616
ISBN-13

978-1847671615
See all details

Kurt Vonnegut
3,332
Paperback
9 offers from $11.26
Ellen van Neerven
2
Paperback
3 offers from $19.25
Lorrie Moore
309
Paperback
14 offers from $22.99
Jean Rhys
2,599
Paperback
20 offers from $15.69
Andrew Bennett
37
Paperback
12 offers from $31.99
Nam Le
1
Hardcover
3 offers from $20.25

Product description

Review

A breathtakingly assured collection of stories-powerful, moving, unsparingly honest-exhibiting a narrative confidence and range that is as remarkable as it is mature. A tremendous debut. -- William Boyd

A promising and fiercely talented writer ― * Telegraph *

The short story collection is constantly on the endangered list, but this stunning collection...shows that it is alive and in the best of health. ― * The Times *

An assured and tremendously readable collection from a young writer with rare scope and strength. ― * Observer *

These are people on the edge, and Nam's prose captures their desperation...bold and worthwhile. Memoirists should stick to what they know; the point of literature is to expand the limits of the world. -- Aravind Adiga ― * Financial Times *

Le has the ability to hit notes of real emotional intensity. -- Hari Kunzru ― * Scotsman *

Each voice is achingly present and authentic . . . ['Halflead Bay'] is as good as anything Tim Winton has produced about Australian society. ― * Guardian *

Wonderful stories that snarl and pant across our crazed world . . . an extraordinary performance by a fine new talent. Nam Le is a heartbreaker, not easily forgotten. -- Junot Diaz

The Boat is tremendous, challenging and ambitious, worthy of the same shelf that holds Dubliners and The Things They Carried-like those works, it asks to be read as a whole and taken seriously as a book... this book nails our collective now, our kairos, with an urgency and relevance that feels visionary. ― * Charles D'Ambrosio *

From the very first page of The Boat, Nam Le's extraordinary talent, range of vision, and moral courage make the reader sit up and take notice. By the last page, one feels a kind of fervent gratitude-rare enough these days-for having been introduced to a young writer whose mark on the literary world, so freshly made, will only grow deeper in the years to come. ― * John Burnham Schwartz *

Nam Le writes with a rare blend of courage and beauty . . . Book your passage on The Boat. You will not forget the people you meet on the voyage. ― * Chris Offutt *

The Boat is an impressive feat, and the debut of a very talented writer. ― * Adam Haslett *

I was impressed and deeply moved by the many worlds to which this brilliant young writer transported me. A terrific book. ― * Margot Livesey *

A superb collection, brimming with humour and compassion. -- Ian Critchley ― * Daily Telegraph * Published On: 2009-02-07

Le's book takes a playful swipe at the good intentions of liberal America. ― * Independent * Published On: 2009-02-27

About the Author

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He has received the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Pushcart Prize and the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Phillips Exeter Academy. His fiction has been appeared in Best Australian Stories, Best New American Voices, A Public Space, NPR's Selected Shorts and more.

namleonline.com

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Canongate Books Ltd; Main edition (19 February 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1847671616
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1847671615
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 1.8 x 19.8 cm

Customer Reviews:
121

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Nam Le

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs, and more

Review this product

Write a customer review

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Lanie

So glad to have read this collection

Reviewed in Australia on 11 November 2020

Verified Purchase

Fascinating stories amazingly written

Helpful

PattyMacDotComma

A great collection of short stories told in many believable voices

Reviewed in Australia on 3 January 2016

5★

I was delighted to find this book of well-written short stories by Aussie author Nam Le, who arrived here by boat as a refugee from Vietnam when he was only one.

These eight stories are all quite different from each other and Le speaks in many voices from different countries, all believable: Vietnamese, Colombian, Japanese, Iranian, Australian.

I think my favourite is the young Aussie lad in the fishing family with the sick mum. Football, a girl, bullies, a jetty, a struggling dad and younger brother. It’s all there. It’s a short story, but it’s all there. This one is reminiscent of Tim Winton.

That to me is the beauty of a good short story. You are curious about what came before and what might follow, but it isn’t necessary to know.

I don’t know if the first story is autobiographical or not, but Le got his Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa, and the first story is about a son writing about his Vietnamese father, who has come to visit him at the University of Iowa at an inopportune time when he has writing deadlines to meet. He resents the interruption and the reminders of his father’s history.

A friend says to just write about Vietnam. “Ethnic literature is hot.” His friends talk about exploiting the whole Vietnamese thing. He doesn’t want to, but as he pieces together his father’s story and understands the horrors of the massacre from which he escaped, he feels compelled.

“…all I could do was think about my father and his excuses. Those tattered bodies on top of him. The ten hours he’d waited, mud filling his lungs, until nightfall.”

He has trouble dealing with the contrast between his father’s experiences and his own life. It’s hard to look at this little old man and realise this was “the soldier” who’d raised him and punished him so harshly.

I enjoyed his writing style. About young Colombians, a guy says, “They look younger than I remember. Only Pedro has grown—he looks like he has been seized by a fistful of hair and stretched up two inches.”

About a father desperate to see his daughter who was taken from him as an infant, “The past’s a cold body of water for me and nowadays my bones ache after even a quick dip.”

The Aussie boy is sitting by the shore “shivering. It was like the wind was greased, he thought, it slid right against you, leaving your skin slippery where it touched.”

About swimming he thinks, “it was easy to forget, past the reef, that you were on the edge of the great continental shelf until a rip drifted you out and one of those cold currents snaked up from the depths and brushed its slightest fringe against your body. Then you remembered.”

I haven’t even mentioned the bombs in Tehran or the people in Hiroshima or The Boat, a harrowing story that could also have been his. You’ll just have to read them.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me a copy of these to review. I hope there will be more to follow from this talented writer.

Reviewed in Australia on 18 November 2013

I heard so many good things about this book before I bought it, and in place I think the stories shine - meeting Elise and The Boat for instance. However, in others, the voice is less convincing - Tehran Calling for example - and this lets down the book overall, in my opinion.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

A. R.

Buena redacción pero ...

Reviewed in Spain on 11 October 2015

Verified Purchase

No puedo darle más de dos estrellas por que el libro no me atrapó como lectora. Algunas de las historias me resultaron pesadas hasta terminar de leerlas.
A su favor puedo decir que está bien redactado con un exquisito vocabulario y las tramas interesantes aunque a mi no me gustara.
No obstante, es un libro que se deja leer. Como son varias historias, si no te gusta una, te gustará la siguiente.

Lo recomendaría para personas, con un alto nivel de Inglés, de lo contrario tiene demasiado vocabulario dficultoso para los no nativos de la lengua.

Translate review to English

Stephen Balbach

The Boat

Reviewed in the United States on 11 July 2008

Verified Purchase

Steve Koss wrote an insightful review here earlier suggesting a connection between this collection of seven short-stories and ethnic literature. Nam Le is Vietnamese, but only the first and last story are directly about the Vietnamese experience, the rest are a seemingly random mix of people and events from all over the world. Nam Le tells us he "could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead, [he] choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans - and New York painters with hemorrhoids." What do Colombian assassins, Hiroshima orphans and hemorrhoid infected New Yorkers have to do with the Vietnamese experience?

Everything. The problem is, as Le says, ethnic literature is "a license to bore. The characters are always flat, generic." Readers are either numb to it because of stereotypes or mental blockage, or have no frame of reference. And as Le's first story shows, the writer can't help but be exploitative in the process. However it is still possible to convey the feelings of the experience through a proxy, and so all of these stories immerse the reader with emotions in preparation for the last story about Vietnamese boat people.

It's been said there is no loneliness more acute than that experienced around other people, in particular family. The New York artist who waits alone in the restaurant for the daughter who never comes; the high school football star who fights his personal battles, but even with his father taking the punches, still faces it alone; the Colombian assassin who faces his destiny without his friends help; in each of the stories the main character is isolated and alienated and faces a great trauma. The experience of reading this book reminded me of when I was child, lost in the crowd, my parents seemingly gone forever and the world a difficult and cold place.

By the last story, "The Boat", the readers sensibilities have been so finely shaped to this sense of alienation, fear and dread that Nam Le is able to convey the Vietnamese boat people "ethnic experience" in a fresh and immediate way. The details and facts are conveyed through the words on the page, but the feeling and sense of experience comes from within. Using this as an interpretive framework, it no longer seems like a collection of short stories but a work greater than its elements, a masterful use of the short story format to touch on universal human experience.

2 people found this helpful

puppydog666

Gratuitously written

Reviewed in the United States on 3 December 2012

Verified Purchase

Just finished the book for my class. While I loved the concept of the book, ie its structure and culmination in "the boat" story, I found the prose gratuitous and almost hard to follow. As some other reviewers have stated, it seems as if Le is writing with a thesaurus. I hope Le will mature as a writer and no longer insist on writing in such a um "corrugated" style.

MisterHobgoblin

A Promising Collection

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 December 2008

Verified Purchase

The Boat is a collection of short stories - seven of them, with the longest approaching novella length, They are diverse; each with a very different scenario - ranging from bandits in Colombia; to a young American woman caught up with a resistance movement in Teheran; to Vietnamese refugees on a junk. Nobody can accuse Nam Le of trading on the standard fare of ethnic literature. But that's really a judgement for others to make; readers should praise Nam Le for breaking away from expectations - but when Nam Le does it himself?

This brings us back to the very first story - the improbably titled Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice. In this story, the viewpoint character is a Vietnamese writer in the US, being visited by his father. This prompts soul-searching about what it is to be a writer; what it is to have left the culture of your parents and embraced a foreign culture. The writer in the story appears caught between writing a fiction based on experience - set in a boat fleeing Viet Nam - and writing diverse stories that defy expectations. Oh, and the writer in Nam Le's story is apparently named after Viet Nam. Now given that what unfolds is a set of diverse stories culminating in the boat one, we have a fairly obvious, personal piece of self-analysis. Some people will herald this as a provocative act of genius, but others might think it looks a little bit too raw, too crude. The point of fiction, surely, is to tell common truths through analogy, not to simply set out personal philosophy with no attempt made to change identities or situations. But then, at the end, perhaps fiction does take over. Nam Le's father surely wouldn't have done *that*?

As with all collections of short stories, the success depends on whether or not the reader catches hold of particular stories. Different readers will find different highlights. The Colombian rebel story seemed the most intriguing, but the beautifully simple, clear narrative was let down in the end by an ambiguous ending - again, a device that will be to some tastes and not others. But in getting beneath the stereotypical characters, portraying the real people behind the cartoonish roles, Nam Le seems to be at his best.

This is a promising collection of stories if you can get through the wince factor of the first one. The writing is mostly clear and lucid. Nam Le conjures up images and scenes with few words, but with great precision and detail. There is more to the stories than one might imagine from their length and it would be interesting to see what Nam Le could make of a full length narrative.

3 people found this helpful

Sally

short stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2022

Verified Purchase

A collection of quite disturbing stories about troubled/displaced people in a variety of settings. The language is very powerful. Some don't have a real ending but are more snapshots of life.

See more reviews

Buy new:

$138.00

Image Unavailable

Follow the author

The Boat Paperback – 19 February 2009

Purchase options and add-ons

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product description

Review

About the Author

Product details

About the author

Nam Le

Customer reviews

Review this product

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new: $138.00

Follow the author

The Boat Paperback – 19 February 2009

Purchase options and add-ons

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product description

Review

About the Author

Product details

About the author

Nam Le

Customer reviews

Review this product

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$138.00