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All right, let's get started.

You are not alone.

You have found other people.

You and I have a friend in common.

Every stupid thing that a writer could do I've done. I think it's really beautiful. Jesus, what I struggle, you know? It was incredible. You know, it's like your head exploded, seeing what was really there. And now here's your host, Brad Listing. Just one person. Everybody, here we go again.

This is it.

This is other people.

This is you and me and another person this is made in a sweltering garage. How's it going out there? What's happening? I'm Brad Listy. I'm in Los Angeles, California. It's very good to be with you. I'm very excited about today's program. My guest is Vietan Wynne. his novel, The Sympathizer, received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year. It also happens to be his debut novel. So not a bad debut. I should mention that I read

the Sympathizer earlier this year when I was judging the tournament of books. I was asked to be a

judge in the tournament of books over

at the morning news. And I had to judge the sympathizer against a book called Oreo, a novel called

Oreo. And I'm very pleased to report that while both were fine books, I picked the sympathizer

as a winner and advanced it to the next round.

This was before it won the Pulitzer.

And now that it has, you know, now that it has received the Pulitzer Prize, I'm feeling very good about my choice in retrospect.

I feel like I chose wisely, not to mention, I avoided an awkward situation where I would

be interviewing Viet after knocking him out of the tournament.

That could have been awkward.

In fact, I'm not even sure if this episode would have happened had I done that.

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