This is a collection of short stories by first-time author Nam Le. I meant to go see him read in Brooklyn tonight but in the end was caught up with other things. Instead, I read the opening story from the book, “Love and Honor and Pity andPride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” which NYT Michiko Kakutani called its “singular masterpiece…a haunting marvel of a story that says as much about familial dreams and burdens as it does about the wages of history…Mr. Le not only writes with an authority and poise rare even among longtime authors, but he also demonstrates an intuitive, gut-level ability to convey the psychological conflicts people experience when they find their own hopes and ambitions slamming up against familial expectations or the brute facts of history.” High praise indeed from the notoriously difficult Kakutani. And I completely agree. I was moved most of all by the father-son relationship that is at the heart of the story. It inevitably made me think of my own father, whom I would love to talk to right now.