Things We Lost to the Water

Things We Lost to the Water (2021) is Eric Nguyen’s debut novel. Categorized as a coming-of-age story, or bildungsroman, a saga, and domestic fiction, the novel is narrated from multiple perspectives and follows the lives and vastly different immigrant experiences of three characters—Hương, Tuấn, and Bình (whose name is anglicized as Ben)—as they move from the Vietnam War to New Orleans in the US and build new lives. Among the book’s numerous accolades, it was listed as “[o]ne of President Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year, [won] the Crook’s Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American South, [was] [l]onglisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize,” and was named both Chicago Public Library’s Best Book of the Year and one of “Fifteen Books to Watch for” by The New York Times (“Things We Lost to the Water.” Penguin Random House).

Eric Nguyen, an American-born child of Vietnamese immigrants, has an MFA in Creative Writing from McNeese State University in Louisiana, which inspired the New Orleans setting (To, Sydney Van. “‘Your Plans Are Never Going to Work’: An Interview With Eric Nguyen.