Andrew X. Pham

“ . . . a gifted writer [who] manages to produce a travel book that, while dealing with a place or culture he knows well, still has all the sharpness and strangeness of a dispatch from the dark side of the moon . . . At its finest moments, his narrative becomes a mediation on the state of loneliness that is everyone’s lot in the modern world, whether at home or abroad.” —Adam Goodheart, The New York Times [on Catfish and Mandala]

“ . . . a white-hot journey into the mysteries of cultural identity . . . Pham opens readers to the full sadness of the human condition on both sides of the world, marveling at spiritual resilience amid irreconcilable facts . . . Its stories are fired by Pham’s corrosive honesty and his unblinking acknowledgment of human failings.” —Roland Kelts, The Philadelphia News [on Catfish and Mandala]

“There are some books that writers shouldn’t read. Not because they are so bad they make you despair why such garbage ever gets published, but because they are so good they make you despair that you could ever write so well yourself. Pham . . . is the best kind of memoirist. He understands a memoir is not really about oneself but about a period, a time, a people.” —Renee Denfield, The Oregonian [on The Eaves of Heaven]