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

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

[Cartagena] is a gripping, intricately woven piece of crime fiction...Psychological insight is a hallmark of Le's work, but he also has a facility for a kind of dark humour...Le uses carefully imagined details to conjure up distant worlds and individuals...Stories like [The Boat] desmonstrate Le's ability to use sensory experiences to evoke the most distant situations and show that he has a considerable talent.
Hirsh Sawney, Times Literary Supplement

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

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

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

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

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

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

Masterfully controlled . . . Taken together, the stories cover a vast geographical territory and are filled with exquisitely painful and raw moments of revelation, captured in an economical style as deft as it is sure.
Publishers Weekly

A polished and intense debut story collection of astonishing range … brilliantly conceived … stunning … this book is very good.
Kirkus Reviews

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, author of Restless

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, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

more...

related items

Official site