paperback, 384 pages
English language
Published July 10, 2016 by Grove Press.
The Sympathizer is the 2015 debut novel by Vietnamese American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is a best-selling novel and recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its reviews have generally recognized its excellence, and it was named a New York Times Editor's Choice.The novel fits the expectations of a number of different novel genres: immigrant, mystery, political, metafiction, dark comedic, historical, spy, and war. The story depicts the anonymous narrator, a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army, who stays embedded in a South Vietnamese community in exile in the United States. While in the United States, the narrator describes being an expatriate and a cultural advisor on the filming of an American film, closely resembling Platoon and Apocalypse Now, before returning to Vietnam as part of a guerrilla raid against the communists. The dual identity of the narrator, as a mole and immigrant, and the Americanization …
The Sympathizer is the 2015 debut novel by Vietnamese American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is a best-selling novel and recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its reviews have generally recognized its excellence, and it was named a New York Times Editor's Choice.The novel fits the expectations of a number of different novel genres: immigrant, mystery, political, metafiction, dark comedic, historical, spy, and war. The story depicts the anonymous narrator, a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army, who stays embedded in a South Vietnamese community in exile in the United States. While in the United States, the narrator describes being an expatriate and a cultural advisor on the filming of an American film, closely resembling Platoon and Apocalypse Now, before returning to Vietnam as part of a guerrilla raid against the communists. The dual identity of the narrator, as a mole and immigrant, and the Americanization of the Vietnam War in international literature are central themes in the novel. The novel was published 40 years to the month after the fall of Saigon, which is the initial scene of the book.A sequel, entitled The Committed, was published on March 2, 2021.
This book is absolutely amazing, though, I should say, it should come with every trigger warning imaginable. A book I somehow could neither put down nor read more than a few pages at a time.
This book is absolutely amazing, though, I should say, it should come with every trigger warning imaginable. A book I somehow could neither put down nor read more than a few pages at a time.
I picked it up because I remember it getting a lot of good reviews. Those were warranted. The book is written in the style of a confession from a VC spy who worked for the South Vietnamese military, gets into the US as a refugee to keep a close eye on his general boss, and gets sent back to Vietnam on a supposed mission to fight the victorious North. Things get awry after that. It's a compelling narrative from a Vietnamese perspective.
A beautifully written work of art with thought-provoking symbolism and complex characters awaits those of you who choose to pick this one up. It is many stories, tragic ones, told from a point of view that I haven't experienced before. Nguyen inserts humor into some of his descriptions that acted as comic relief for me, and just when I thought the plot would get slower, along comes a bombshell...
The Sympathizer is both a captivating and challenging read. I recommend it.
