The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

This book is a surprising, sometimes shocking, and an incredibly important perspective of the Vietnam War era from a Vietnamese refugee perspective, a side of the story that Americans don't learn in school. Written as the confession of a captured spy addressing his captor, our narrator recounts his entire life - from his mother's loving care to the senseless murder of a colleague - until the present moment, when he must finally face his faceless ...read more

Did I enjoy this book? Not really.

Am I glad I read it? Absolutely.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about history. I know very little about Vietnam and the fall of Saigon and even less about the Vietnamese people. By the time I reached the 5th chapter I stopped because I could not figure out what was going on. I was lost. I put the book down and hit the internet for some background on the fall of Saigon and interviews with the author. ...read more

The Vietnamese American Writer Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s novel, The Sympathizer is about a double agent for North Vietnam who is unnamed. This character works for a General of the South Vietnamese police force, one of his duties is to torture North Vietnamese spies. The novel is in the format of a narrative told from the point of this character. This character I will call this for the rest of this review, the Sympathizer. The Sympathizer follows the ge...read more

I read this for my September book club and I consider it one of the best books I've read in a while. The writing is witty and sardonic and the character development is rich and layered, delivered through the theme of duality throughout the novel. The protagonist is at once critical of capitalism, catholicism, communism, and other -isms and fond of certain aspects of each. He is self-aware in his contradictions and vocal about his character flaws ...read more