The Sympathizer

Unsurprisingly for a Pulitzer winner, this book is phenomenal.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story. It's equal parts thriller, satire, and meditation grappling with the complexity of discovering one's identity. Both in terms of the title character's split allegiances and the struggle of his fellow refugees, but also in terms of Vietnam and America reshaping (or failing to reshape) their conceptions of self once the Vietnam War ended.

I'll admit I was skeptical about the writing style at first. The book is written almost as if spoken, sort of weaving and tangenting naturally. Nguyen also eschews some basic English style (like giving proper names, or having quotation marks and spacing to denote someone speaking) which can be a pretentious warning flag. Once you're immersed in the story, however, it's hard to imagine it written any other way and the natural flow and thriller pacing makes this book extremely hard to put down.

This is an amazing book. The hero is an illegitimate son of a Vietnamese woman and an European priest. As such he is an outcast in his own society. It is from this position as an outcast that he became a revolutionary and due to this position he was ordered by his party to join the South Vietnamese secret services. There he had an illustrious career, due to his US education arranged for by CIA. Being a trusted aide of an important general, he leaves with other evacuees and goes on reporting on the Vietnamese refugee community to the Vietnamese Communist Party. After a while he joins the guerillas attempting to infiltrate Vietnam, arrested, and sent to reeducation. In this he is accompanied by his friend, a former member of the Special Forces who lost his wife and child during the evacuation. In the camp he encounters their third friend who was badly maimed by napalm, while fighting the Americans and became the camp commissar. The hero was made to write a confession, was badly tortured, and only after he broke down was released. The commissar arranged for him and his friend to go on a boat in an attempt to leave the country.
The story is, though, less important than the ideas reflected in the book. The story is, in fact, a powerful attack on the notion that ideological consistency has value of any sort. The hero, experiencing the struggle over Vietnam from both sides, appreciates the freedoms inherent to US culture, but is highly aware of racism and of the willingness to manipulate other peoples and force them to act according to US agenda, inherent to this culture. While back in Vietnam, he realizes that the same inability to accept difference without considering it inferior became part of the revolutionary culture as well. Thus, while still identifying with the ideas of economic and social equality, he could not identify with the kind of revolutionary culture developing after the Communists took power.
The hero's ambivalence also is not depicted as a solution. In fact, he took part whether by action or by omission in several murders and tortures, for which he cannot forgive himself. The author avoids thus an easy solution of pointing out that the middle way is the best. It, clearly, is not.
In fact, the book does not present a solution. In its end the hero is still a revolutionary, still trusts that a change for the better is possible, and is still looking for a way to implement such a change. The analysis of the dilemmas is, though, brilliant. In that sense, the book has, in my view, an important political message.
The last thing I wished to point out is that not just the ideas, but also the writing is amazing - harsh, ironic, non-sentimental, but very human. The language is rich and flowing. The cultural observations are acute and very amusing. In fact I laughed many times while reading, even though there is nothing particularly happy about the story or about its message.