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 so wanted that word, perhaps repeated a few times, to be my whole review--the word that torture enlightens us to because when faced with it we just want everything to go away. Still, consciousness is the problem and nothingness the solution and a sympathizer, especially one who is educated and intelligent has way too much consciousness, suffering not only for himself but for others, the objects of his sympathy. Instead he is repeatedly forced to choose sides and sometimes kill those he sympathizes with, or at the very least doing nothing to stop those on his side from doing so.
The secret of fighting a war is to be unsympathetic. Ideology needs to replace sympathy; the ideology of people who are like you. Unfortunately, no one is like the Captain, the confessor, the bastard, the unnamed narrator. He fits in nowhere, he is accepted by no one. This …
Nothing!
I so wanted that word, perhaps repeated a few times, to be my whole review--the word that torture enlightens us to because when faced with it we just want everything to go away. Still, consciousness is the problem and nothingness the solution and a sympathizer, especially one who is educated and intelligent has way too much consciousness, suffering not only for himself but for others, the objects of his sympathy. Instead he is repeatedly forced to choose sides and sometimes kill those he sympathizes with, or at the very least doing nothing to stop those on his side from doing so.
The secret of fighting a war is to be unsympathetic. Ideology needs to replace sympathy; the ideology of people who are like you. Unfortunately, no one is like the Captain, the confessor, the bastard, the unnamed narrator. He fits in nowhere, he is accepted by no one. This time of identity politics when it's all about being part of some group, is also a time of polarization and dividedness. The ultimate aim of belonging is to wage war against those who do not belong.
There are no good guys in this novel, the closest to one being Sonny, whom he is ordered to kill, but that's part of the point. There is always some crime to confess.
In the end, our sympathizer remains a revolutionary, but one in search of a revolution. If it's not too paradoxical, perhaps that will be an uprising of sympathizers who will defeat the ideologues.
I was surprised to find I enjoyed this book as much as I did, normally sticking to Sci-Fi and fantasy, but the Narrator's blatant honesty and ability to find humour mixed with the dark tones made this book a serious entertainer for me.
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.
Because it contains great writing. Because it tells an epic story. Because it sheds light on Vietnam, which was never clear to me. Because it holds ALL players equally guilty. Because Americans are generally too high-minded to accept responsibility. Because it is about the inhumanity of humanity. Because it gives a perspective that allows us, (everyone), to better understand ourselves. Because it is important.
This book will disturb you. It is violent. There are no heroes or even anti heroes. Just us ignorant humans at the mercy of history and power. If you are not anti war, anti imperialism, and skeptical of all power and ideology after reading this...I probably don't want to know you.
The Hegelian concept that no conflict is ever right against wrong, but right against right, is a mainstay of any freshman philosophy class, and maybe 19-year-old me would have had my mind blown by this novel. As it was, it came across as an overlong explanation of the point that any view can be right or wrong depending on the way you frame it, and the ability to sympathize with individuals on either side is the key to seeing both viewpoints. If this point had been the basis of a more interesting plot -- it REALLY dragged in the middle -- or characters I actually cared about, maybe I would have liked it better. The story up until they leave Saigon is fascinating, and setting the novel entirely in Vietnam would have been a better choice. I also found the prose and lack of quotation marks (yes, I know that's …
The Hegelian concept that no conflict is ever right against wrong, but right against right, is a mainstay of any freshman philosophy class, and maybe 19-year-old me would have had my mind blown by this novel. As it was, it came across as an overlong explanation of the point that any view can be right or wrong depending on the way you frame it, and the ability to sympathize with individuals on either side is the key to seeing both viewpoints. If this point had been the basis of a more interesting plot -- it REALLY dragged in the middle -- or characters I actually cared about, maybe I would have liked it better. The story up until they leave Saigon is fascinating, and setting the novel entirely in Vietnam would have been a better choice. I also found the prose and lack of quotation marks (yes, I know that's the popular thing now) exhausting. Obviously I'm missing whatever the Pulitzer committee saw in it, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I'm on a string of great original protagonists, now, despite marginally flawed overall works. If I can keep this up this year, I may rediscover the love of reading.
A page-turner that manages to fit a political thriller, a unique perspective on 1970s post-war L.A./Thai/Vietnamese history, and a clear-eyed critique of one of cinema's landmark movies into one book. If you grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s as I did, this book will provide some very valuable perspective into the Vietnamese-American experience.