The Magic Fish

Trung Le Nguyen wrote and drew The Magic Fish, his first graphic novel, and Random House Graphic, a Penguin Random House imprint, brought it out in 2020. The story is drawn from his own family life and from the tales he grew up with.

Tiến Phong, the son in the family at the centre of it, practises English with his mother Helen, whose Vietnamese name is Hiến, using fairy tales as their text. Three of those tales are told inside the book. The first is Tattercoats, about a girl sold by her father to a strange man who comes from the sea, who runs away with her aunt's help, takes work as a kitchen errand boy at a castle and becomes a friend to its prince. They are European stories carrying Vietnamese inflections, and they sit alongside the story of the household.

In that main story Tiến is trying to come out as gay, both to his friend Julian, whom he has a crush on, and to his parents, whom he is afraid of losing. Helen, meanwhile, learns that her mother is dying in Vietnam and cannot get to her in time, and her memories of leaving Vietnam and her guilt at being absent from her family run alongside her son's story. The two narratives are drawn so that they move in step with each other.

The book brought Nguyen a nomination for an Eisner Award, and it was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award, the GLAAD Media Awards and the Lambda Literary Awards.