Apiece of advice that every aspiring novelist is sure to get, sooner or later, is to "write what you know". By restricting yourself to direct experience and autobiography, the theory goes, you give your narrative authenticity. Now comes a first book by a young Vietnamese-Australian author that challenges this maxim: The Boat , a collection of short stories by Nam Le, insists that literature must also be created out of worlds the writer does not know.

The opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice", is set in the Iowa Writer's Program and features a Vietnamese-Australian man, who - much like Nam - quit his job as a lawyer in Australia and came to Iowa to write. He wants to write about people living in faraway places but is told that such literature does not sell. A visiting literary agent tells him, "You have to ask yourself, what makes me stand out?" The answer: "Your background and life experience ." The young writer seems to take this advice; when his father comes to spend time with him in Iowa, he decides to write a story about his father's life in Vietnam.