Viet Thanh Nguyen on Adapting His Novel “The Sympathizer” for Television (The Runstad Lecture Series)

The Runstad Lecture Series welcomes Viet Thanh Nguyen to discuss the challenges and rewards of adapting his Pulitzer Prize-winning spy novel about a half-Vietnamese, half-French communist double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War into a hit miniseries on HBO. The series stars Hoa Xuande, Robert Downey Jr., and Sandra Oh, with showrunner Park Chan-wook. A question-and-answer period after the talk will be moderated by Thomas Dai, assistant professor of English at University of Idaho. Viet’s talk will be in the Administration Auditorium on the U of I campus in Moscow, is free and open to the public, and co-sponsored by the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, the Department of English, and the Habib Institute for Asian Studies.