The Boat

The Boat is a collection of short stories heavily influenced by author Nam Le’s background and childhood experiences. Born in Vietnam, Nam Le fled to Australia with his parents while he was still a baby. The family was one of many families of refugees fleeing the Vietnam War by boat and taking refuge in other countries. The Boat presents seven stories that cover a wide range of settings, taking the reader to Colombia, New York City, Australia, Japan, and Iran. The narratives span six decades from the end of World War II to the early twenty-first century. Each story tells a fresh tale, and Le masterfully presents central characters who have to meet an existential challenge.

Le has commented on the similarities between himself and the narrator of the stories, however, he has said that although writing in such a voice came naturally to him, his complex relationship with the country of his birth caused him to have a complex relationship with the text and the material with which it dealt. Stories included in The Boat are set in a variety of different locations around the globe, including Colombia, Tehran, New York City, Iowa, and Australia.

In the first story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” the central character is named Nam Le, like the author. In this way, Le demonstrates his tendencies to mix reality with fiction, forcing the reader to read his work as something other than merely his own autobiographical experience. The central character is a Vietnamese Australian ex-lawyer who has become a fellow at the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop. As Le is facing a final deadline to write a story, he is visited by his estranged father from Australia. Now, Le tries any trick to overcome his writer’s block, and he uses an old typewriter instead of a computer to stop himself from endlessly revising. While thinking, he remembers a conversation with a fellow aspiring writer. Through this imaginary conversation that author, Le offers a strong view of his beliefs as a writer.



Fellow writers and instructors suggest that Le write a story about Vietnam, as ethnic literature is becoming increasingly trendy in the contemporary American literary market. Le gives in, deciding to write the “ethnic story” in order to make his deadline. He chooses to write about his father’s survival of the infamous 1968 My Lai massacre by American troops in Vietnam. After abandoning his craft to appeal to popularity, Le is punished, as his father burns the typewritten pages of that story in the gasoline drum of a homeless man they had befriended earlier.

In “Cartagena,” which won the 2007 Pushcart Prize, Le writes about teenage assassins in Colombia, caught in the crossfire of dire social and economic circumstances, civil war, and the international cocaine trade. These children have been forced to abandon their childhood to switch into survival mode. The story revolves around Juan and his friend Hernando, whose slow descent into criminality begins when they are kidnapped by a corrupt policeman and a pedophile Colombian businessman. After Hernando kills both their captors using the policeman’s gun, Juan decides to join the assassination squads of underground figure El Padre. Now Juan kills for money that allows him to buy a safe house in the barrio for his mother, who lost her husband to right-wing militias.

Eventually, Juan is ordered to kill Hernando, who works to get street kids out of gangs. When Juan refuses, he is called to meet El Padre. Characteristically for Le’s central characters, Juan is pushed to the limit of endurance by the author.
In “Tehran Calling,” lawyer Sarah Middleton decides to visit her Iranian college friend, Parvin, in Tehran. The story follows Sarah as she enters the city for the first time. Once Sarah meets Parvin at the home of her privileged parents, she encounters the cultural disconnect between religious doctrine and the private lives of those who live under this law.



Parvin leads a party of reformists, determined to challenge the authorities with a play about a thirteen-year-old girl killed by religious radicals. Suddenly, Parvin disappears and her fiancé, Mahmoud, goes with Sarah to find her. When Sarah sleeps with Mahmoud after their close call with the militias, while Parvin is still unaccounted for, there is a sense of multiple betrayals that is a common denominator in Le’s stories.

Only the final story of Le’s book returns to the topic of Vietnam. “The Boat” tells the story of sixteen-year-old Mai, whose family has placed her on a boat full of refugees trying to escape the hardships of Communist Vietnam in the late 1970s. Caught in a storm, the refugees find themselves without engine power and rapidly dwindling resources. The ship’s captain, Anh Phuoc, tries to steer the boat toward a friendly coast with the help of an emergency sail, but people start dying. Phuoc has made the passage to freedom already, but he chooses to return to Vietnam to rescue others. Mai falls seriously ill during the voyage but recovers as they reach land.