The Interpreter
by David K. Shipler
“Set during the haunting, last days of the Vietnam War, The Interpreter is a nuanced and beautifully written portrait of the inner life of a war correspondent and his unforgettable Vietnamese interpreter. Shipler captures the awful truth that every correspondent knows—that we are unworthy of the brave men and women who act as our translators and ‘fixers,’ the solitary heroes living between two languages and cultures but refusing to take sides.”
—David Ignatius, columnist for the Washington Post and novelist whose most recent book is Phantom Orbit
April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781963101072
About the Author
David K. Shipler won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. Among his other publications the book entitled, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, also has garnered many awards. Formerly, he was a foreign correspondent of The New York Times and served as one of their bureau chiefs.
Description
THE INTERPRETER
Pulitzer prize-winning author David K. Shipler’s fictionalized story of a Vietnamese interpreter, based on his own experiences as a war correspondent, brings back the tensions within Vietnam during the war, focusing on a local with close ties to American journalists and politicians.
The Interpreter is based on the true story of a Vietnamese translator who is wounded—not physically—by a love of country too pure for the contaminated choices that confront him. Dragged by an inner search, he has wandered among the neat categories of allegiance imposed by Vietnam’s lifetime of warfare and foreign occupation.
But he fits into none of the available boxes—not Communist, not Government, not pro-American, nor any of the assortment of political dissidents who populate the shadowy warrens of Saigon. He finds no home with either the tortured or the torturers. Instead, he tries to interpret Vietnam through an evolving comradeship with an American correspondent, to distant, weary audiences who barely listen anymore. He commits a futile betrayal against the correspondent’s wife. He harbors a secret. He clings to a simple nobility, he believes, as an authentic Vietnamese of transcendent patriotism, and so he keeps his footing in the whirlwind of panic as Saigon falls. By refusing an offer to escape with his family to the US, he consigns his future to an intricate, stumbling dance with the victorious Communist regime.
This man is fictionalized, but he is not alone in the world. His torment is a hidden story not only of Vietnam but of the hundreds like him who have interpreted their war-torn countries for the foreigners who fuel the fighting with weapons and blood.
“A powerful story of trust, suspicion, loss, and survival, set in the waning days of the Vietnam War and the ensuing years of Communist rule. Shipler’s vivid writing allows you to taste the breakfast pho and walk through the chaotic traffic of Saigon. His main characters—a world-wise Vietnamese interpreter and the earnest American journalist who employs him—could hold their own in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.”
—John Darnton, Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent and author of Burning Sky
“David Shipler was not only a correspondent at the battles, but he recorded and understood the Vietnamese and their land. He saw both sides claim land with their flags on long bamboo poles, but knew that the land was no good without people planting, harvesting, cooking pho, and recruiting the young to become good fighters. To understand what happened in the American War in Vietnam, you must read The Interpreter.”
—Le Ly Hayslip, author of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace
