Set during the fall of Saigon and the years after in America, the captain spies on the general and the men he escaped with, sharing his information with his communist blood brothers in coded letters.
The narrator is an undercover communist agent posing as a captain in the Southern Vietnamese Army. Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer brilliantly draws you in with the opening line: "I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces." It's thrilling, rhythmic, and astonishing, as is the rest of Nguyen's enthralling portrayal of the Vietnam War.
Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review In its final chapters, The Sympathizer becomes an absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet. Nguyen's skill in portraying this sort of ambivalent personality compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene, and le Carre. The nameless protagonist-narrator, a memorable character despite his anonymity, is an Americanized Vietnamese with a divided heart and mind. But this tragicomic novel reaches beyond its historical context to illuminate more universal themes. His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light. brings a distinctive perspective to the war and its aftermath. Praise for The Sympathizer: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction THE SYMPATHIZER is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.Ī gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, THE SYMPATHIZER explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016 A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, THE SYMPATHIZER is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties
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