The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

I had no particular reason for picking this up at the library except that it sounded good as I browsed the shelves. This is a book of short stories all focusing on immigrants.

The stories capture the people who fled to America and lost family along the way, who are now haunted by the ghosts of the dead. The ones who are sponsored and end up living in San Francisco with two gay men. The elderly professor who is battling, and losing, dementia and keeps calling his wife by the name of an old lover. And so on.

There are no heroic battles or anything spectacular with these stories, but they are solid and examine a snippet of the life of a refugee. Being forced to leave your country and land in another, very alien, country and try to survive takes courage.

All in all, a very good little book of short stories