About the Book

A compelling memoir about one man's harrowing escape from Vietnam and the mystery of his father's disappearance along the way

With the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the war in Vietnam ended, but the refugee crisis was only beginning. Among the millions of people who fled Vietnam by boat was Vinh Nguyen, along with his mother and siblings, and his father, who left separately and mysteriously vanished in the open waters.

Decades later, Nguyen goes looking for answers. What he discovers is a sea of questions and buried truths. To find his father—and anchor himself in the present—Nguyen must piece together the debris of history with family stories that have been scattered across generations and continents, kept for years in broken hearts and guarded silences. The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse is the intricate exploration of a searching mind. By returning to the past, Nguyen sheds light on the psyche of a grieving person who chases certainty and seeks resolution.

As the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, Nguyen takes readers on a poignant tour of disappeared refugee camps, abandoned family homes and sinking boats. Along the way he examines strange reunions, stunted languages and unspoken conversations, and explores final films, migration photographs and impossible decisions.

Part fractured reminiscence, part invented history and part fictional fabulation, Nguyen's story is about learning to live with what's already lost and the memories of what might have been.

Critical Praise

“Blazingly brilliant.” — Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of How to Pronounce Knife

"Gorgeous and searching, mournful and luminescent, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse is a salve and a map. Nguyen has written a gorgeous meditation on being, remembering, and becoming: a stunning work through and through."

— Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal

“Guided by invention and memory, creation and fidelity, this unforgettable book puts words to what is lost and what survives, while existing, somehow, within all that cannot be salvaged by language. The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse is a work of extraordinary grace and beauty.” — Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“In Vinh Nguyen’s tour de force memoir, crafted with fierce emotional intelligence and heartbreaking vulnerability, the past is a parallel world where his family can be made whole again. From actual journeys, like his quixotic return to a Thai refugee camp with the aid of social media, to the poignantly fabulistic flights courtesy of fiction’s alternative maps, here is a writer forthrightly reaching for all the survival tools available to him. In this homecoming of the self, Nguyen travels through doubt and desire to arrive at the terra firma of the here and now.” — Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt

“Dreamlike and urgent, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse captures a family history perforated by mystery, where there is no hard boundary between the real and the remembered, the present and the past, filial devotion and writerly betrayal. Every page of this ingenious book, written with tender artistry, filled me with wonder but what lingers is the unexpected love story at its core—the tale of a mother and son, committed to holding, knowing, and enlarging one another. Nguyen is a magical, dazzling writer. This book is a marvel.”
— Kyo Maclear, author of Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9781443472784
• ISBN 10: 1443472786
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• On Sale: 04/08/2025
• Pages: 272
• List Price:24.99 CAD
• BISAC1 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / Asian & Asian American
• BISAC2 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
• BISAC3 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General

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