SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Robert just can't seem to forget Suzy. He's an Oakland cop, and she left him two years ago. She ended up marrying a man named Sonny, who was a gambler and a smuggler and a man who escaped from Vietnam, like Suzy. Robert always wondered what happened to his ex-wife. And now Sonny's forced him to look for her. He shadows him on a journey that takes them through the gambling underworld of Las Vegas and the haunted enclaves of Suzy's past. "Dragonfish: A Novel" is a first novel by Vu Tran, an acclaimed short story writer who teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago. We asked why did you want to write crime fiction?
VU TRAN: It's a very sexy genre, and I thought it'd be fun to indulge in that. And I found myself in telling a story about immigrants that noir or crime framework allowed me to say a lot of other things.
SIMON: You have me convinced after reading this novel that noir is a very good genre to tell the stories of immigrants.
TRAN: In my view, noir or crime - whatever you want to call it - there's always that interplay between what is knowable and unknowable. And there's always that aspect of stories that are hidden from people. And I think the story of the immigrant is similar. I think all immigrants have stories that they're either willing to tell or unwilling to tell. And I think the reasons for them not wanting to tell those stories have always been interesting to me.
SIMON: Can I get you to talk a bit about your background?
TRAN: I was born outside of Saigon. And I was born in 1975 in September, which was actually four months after the fall of Saigon. My father left Vietnam before I was born. He was a captain in the South Vietnamese air force. In 1980, my mother took my sister and I, and we escaped Vietnam by boat. We manage to safely make it to Malaysia, where we were in a refugee camp. That was where I was for about four months until my father, who settled in Oklahoma, he sponsored us. And we finally made it to Tulsa, Okla., where I grew up.
SIMON: And of course, that's - your background is in some respects astonishingly similar to that of your character Suzy and her daughter Mai.
TRAN: It is, yes. Many of the things that they go through in the novel, like escaping Vietnam by boat, I went through that. I don't remember any of it, unfortunately, so I had to rely on mother's stories and my own research. But the basic premise of what they go through in the novel is based on my own experience.
SIMON: I have to tell you, the author, that my favorite character in this book is not Robert, the good guy, but Sonny...
TRAN: (Laughter).
SIMON: The tough, the heavy, the bad guy. I mean, you know, he once chopped off a man's fingers in a refugee camp because he messed with his son.
TRAN: He did indeed. (Laughter) He plays the role of the villain in the novel. But I think his actions, his behavior come from a very real place. I think there is that impulse in him to defend who he thinks he is. And he believes himself to be a real man, whatever that would mean to readers. But to him, it means a very specific thing. And anyone who - or any world that, you know, tries to contradict that or to belittle that idea of manhood to him, I think he reacts very violently.
SIMON: That raises a question. You're a University of Chicago professor.
TRAN: Yes.
SIMON: Where did you learn how to chop off a man's hand? (Laughter) Are those faculty meetings getting rough, or..?
TRAN: Oh boy, I'm not going to comment on that. My approach to him was to kind of introduce him in a very dramatic light.
SIMON: He holds hand with his son almost as he does it.
TRAN: Exactly. I mean, he did it to protect his son, to defend his son. But my hope was that gradually as the story unfolded, that dramatic idea of him, that very negative and dark view of him, would be complicated.
SIMON: You intertwine a couple of stories in the book. You have the noir thriller of Robert searching for Suzy. And then you have Suzy's letters to her daughter, trying to explain yourself - I think she says at one point woman to woman. She says by the time you read this, you'll be a woman, too. So in a sense, although Suzy's elusive, you give her the strongest voice.
TRAN: I - I did. And, you know, writing those letters, they came out of me the most smoothly. I didn't have to fight to get that voice out. I think it gives the crime narrative an emotional foundation that connects all of the main characters to each other, at least emotionally. Once I got those letters down, once I got that foundation, I think the crime narrative - more complications - interesting complications arose out of that. It provided me with the rest of the novel in many ways.
SIMON: Do you kind of love Las Vegas?
TRAN: I do love Las Vegas. I didn't at first. And I...
SIMON: You went to grad school there or something, right?
TRAN: I got my Ph.D. there, and then I taught there for about four years. I also - and my parents wouldn't like hearing this - but I love poker, and I played a lot of poker in Las Vegas. Of course, that has gone into the novel as well. I'd like to also, you know, add to that about the city - it's something that Dave Hickey, an art critic - he always said that Las Vegas is a city that cheats you honestly, which is to say that, you know, when you're gambling, you always know what the odds are. You know, the odds are in favor of the house. Vegas has no pretensions of genuineness. And in a way, that's more genuine; that's more truthful.
SIMON: Vu Tran in Chicago. His new novel - "Dragonfish." Thanks so much for being with us.
TRAN: Thank you so much for having me, Scott.
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