Publisher's description. From Edward Snowden and Palestinian-Israeli relations to political philosophy and the nature of democracy, Because We Say So offers a cross-section of perspectives on the question of America's ongoing hegemony.

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The poetry is a conduit for a life in which violence and delicacy collide… I like the fragility, resilience and the sense that the stories that need telling are hardest to tell – a difficulty Ocean Vuong is courageously minded to overcome.

There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr Vuong’s sincerity and candour, and from his ability to capture specific moments in rime with photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things.

Ocean Vuong is the Walt Whitman of Vietnamese American literature. Lyrical, expansive, sexual, provocative, he sings of the Vietnamese body and of Vietnamese history.

The operatic voice of the book is vulnerable and unpredictable. Some of its strongest poems are also the strangest… It is an impressive, uneven, moving book about painful and important subjects – and is the work of a young poet who might, excitingly, say anything next.

Many of the poems in this, Vuong’s debut collection, achieve lift-off amid comparable scenes of drama and desperation… This is a book full of promise.

Vuong writes in what may be one of the most unfashionable modes of recent decades, in the richly meditative style of Rainer Maria Rilke. And, almost unbelievably, he does so successfully… Vuong’s roomy, cool, risky poems are more than promising, and this is an exciting and compelling book.

Taking war and cultural upheaval in its stride, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is an assured but open debut collection. It’s accessible to non-poetry readers while offering sufficient depth to keep the experts engaged.

If you only read one new book of poetry this year, make it Ocean Vuong’s game-changing debut collection. Night Sky With Exit Wounds is breathtakingly beautiful, gut-wrenching and sublime… Phenomenal.

One of the most extraordinary first collections of poems in recent memory… The poems sear through the heart, Vuong finding the words and feelings to capture moments with complete clarity.

His style is not unlike a wall of sounds, a relatively consistent, arrestedly pubescent palette of desire and obsession, turned up high enough to hit the pulse.

From its opening lines...the book brims with precise, surreal, erotic imagery… Vuong authoritatively lays claim to a range of symbols and tropes... Vuong possesses a large and unusual imagination… Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a remarkable debut. Where Vuong is headed is anyone’s guess, but you’ll want to go with him.

Vuong’s intimate lyrical voice, his precise, stark imagery and engagement with gay sexuality construct a familiar story of loss… Balancing memory and silence with erudition, Vuong’s poetry resists being so easily pinned down… Vuong’s poems, written with intelligence and tenderness, offer new spaces for becoming.

His debut collection, praised for its “precise, stark” imagery, can be read both as a personal story – of gay sexuality, absent fathers and hyphenated identities – and as a highly erudite exploration of poetry’s possibilities.

His debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, is the work of a man with history on his back, even if he has had to imagine some of it into being again. He brings a mythmaker’s insistence on being seen and heard to subjects ranging from the death of Telemachus’s father, from Homeric myth, to the fall of Saigon and common-or-garden masturbation.

Vuong’s words writhe and spin – his use of English is astonishing. He’s a smelter at his poetry, making words transform into something other than letters and meaning…. His gay love poems are stark, beautiful and utterly unnerving in their uncompromising adoration… A magical journey into Vuong’s imagination and talents and an astonishing debut collection.

Night Sky With Exit Wounds…contains poems of finely pitched, operatic feeling that unpick the violence and fragility of masculinity with wisdom and humour.

Few poets in recent years have made such an immediate impact as Vuong.

By turns moving, charming and harrowing… An extraordinary, muscular first collection.

[Night Sky with Exit Wounds] is delicate, intimate and political.

Sometimes, I think of it as a song cycle; sometimes, a book of poems; sometimes, an epic. Vuong puts himself at the centre of this collection in an astonishing way, even as he is also entirely willing to set himself aside.

Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds... is beguiling and sublime.

Vuong's voice is unique and inspires empathy.

Beautiful... [Night Sky With Exit Wounds] is pretty special.

I loved Dadland for its tenderness, humour and candour. It has begun to open the door for me to what may well lie ahead in my life, in so many of our lives, in terms of ageing parents. And it has also taught me something deeply moving about tolerance, and about love

A wonderful, haunting and beautifully written memoir... I found myself laughing out loud at times and, at others, unable to hold back the tears... An absolutely stunning book

Dadland has the weight of family love but fizzes along in accessible and dynamic prose, highly recommended

A mesmerising performance by a natural storyteller gifted with the most seductive material possible, in the wild and wonderful life of her exasperating Irish father. Pain and annoyance is transmuted into pure narrative gold, as Keggie Carew interrogates the legend of this wartime adventurer and the bitter comedy of his domestic relationships and his late decline. A brave, risk-taking tale that alarms, delights and moves. As soon as you come to the end, you want to start again, to see if those things really happened

You love these people from the first page ... As Tom's life falls apart memory by memory, Keggie is picking it up again and her storytelling is spell-binding. Effortlessly readable, this is a delight combining laughter - and tears, yes, quite a few of those.

Compelling

A moving memoir-cum-biography.

By some margin my Book of the Month... A detective story, a family history, a thrilling tale of derring-do, and the most distinctive and affecting memoir I’ve read since H is for Hawk.

Utterly remarkable, and beautifully evoked… Dadland is a completely riveting, deeply poignant “manhunt” for which I predict great things.

Dadland, by Keggie Carew, is being tipped for award-winning breakout success in the vein of H is for Hawk

It’s an exorcism, ghost-hunt and swim through the archipelago of her father’s shattered self… The author’s descriptions have an easy lyricism.

The old question 'what did you do in the war, Dad?' has never had a more surprising or moving answer.

Warm and funny, sometimes regretful and sad, but overall a read like a rollercoaster. Wonderful.

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I'd give up right now

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I’d give up right now… This gripping book, written with real verve and a narrative expertise that wouldn’t shame a veteran.

A brilliant, bittersweet biography.

Keggie’s writing is immersive… She writes with a warmth and generosity about her father, a man who was a genuine character and hero.

Dadland is deeply personal. But it is also the story of our generations: people touched by war and by Alzheimer’s