The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) (The Sympathizer, 1)

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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
367 pages

What’s it about?
“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.” So begins this thoughtful, cerebral look at the Vietnam War. We see the conflict through the eyes of the narrator- a half French, half Vietnamese communist sleeper agent living in the U.S. after the war. This s a spy novel, a story of friendship, and a look at how a young man can be drawn into a political situation, and soon be in over his head.

What did I think?
I enjoyed this book. It was slower moving than most classic spy novels but it had so much to say about the conflict in Vietnam. No one is spared in the author’s analysis- not North Vietnam, not South Vietnam, not France, and certainly not America. It seems like we all had a part to play in creating a war that was both brutal, costly, and a training ground for future conflicts.

Should you read it?
So my first description of this book is cerebral and I will stick with that. This novel is a disturbing portrait of war, but also a disturbing portrait of what happens to individuals after a war. What happened if you were left in Vietnam and fought for the losing side? Equally, what happened if you were the victor? What kind of experience do those “lucky” enough to escape as political refugees face once they arrive here in America? All interesting and timely questions.

Quote-
“I laid out the charges against him of subversion, conspiracy, and murder, but emphasized that he was innocent until proven guilty, which made him laugh. Your American puppet masters like to say that, but it’s stupid, he said. History, humanity, religion, this war tells us exactly the reverse. We are guilty until proven innocent, as even the Americans have shown. Why else do they believe everyone is really Viet Cong? Why else do they shoot first and ask questions later? Because to them all yellow people are guilty until proven innocent. Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.”

If you like this try-
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
​Matterhorn by Karl Marlinates
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I remember visiting Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, taking in all the history, and all the many ways their countries and their people were exploited and destroyed by the US (and others), and I wondered why they welcomed us there or even allowed us in. Such a shameful part of our history that have lasting effects even now.
Nguyen brings it to light in even more stark detail, on a more personal, individual level, but also told with dark humor at times. He also does not let the Vietnamese people off the hook so easily, acknowledging that they were literally their own worst enemy at times.
I liked the running theme in the book of the conflicting identities of the protagonist in the story as a stand-in for Vietnam as a whole.
Very compelling and eye-opening book.

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 or weaknesses. The book provides an important (and often overlooked) point of view about war in Vietnam and provides context, insight, and perspective from both sides of the conflict within the Vietnamese population. I found this to be informative, eye-opening, and particularly relevant regarding the recent American retreat from Afghanistan. I highly recommend this book.

This was a slog. I wasn’t particularly excited to read a Vietnam War novel to begin with—historical fiction is rarely my genre of choice, and Vietnam is, frankly, my least favorite war to read about—but I went in with an open mind. I came out the other side thoroughly unmoved. Let’s start with the positives: Nguyen is undeniably smart, and the book is ambitious in scope. It tackles identity, ideology, imperialism, memory, exile, and more. But it does so with the emotional temperature of a concrete floor and the narrative urgency of a grad school paper written on deadline. The unnamed narrator, a Communist double agent and self-proclaimed master of nuance, never earned my interest, let alone my empathy. He’s slippery, smug, and (perhaps intentionally) unlikable—but that’s a tricky recipe when the whole book hinges on a first-person confession. I never once felt connected to him. By the halfway point, I stopped caring what happened to him. By the end, I was just glad it did end. Then there's the prose, which many readers praise as "beautiful" and "slow-burning." Personally, I found it bloated. Sentence after sentence unspooled into digressions that circled back on themselves like a dog chasing its tail. And don’t get me started on the 150-page detour into thinly veiled Apocalypse Now critique. If I wanted an extended film studies essay disguised as fiction, I’d rather it not be grafted mid-narrative like a tumor. Nguyen has been compared to Graham Greene, but I didn’t see it. Greene wrote with tension, restraint, and emotional resonance. The Sympathizer meanders with philosophical flair and little feeling. It wants to be both spy novel and satire, memoir and manifesto, but rarely commits long enough to excel at any of them. I admire the ambition. I respect the intelligence. But I was not entertained, moved, or compelled. And I definitely won’t be picking up the sequel.

I loved this book. I thought the narrative structure was so interesting. It was very dense, but still felt raw. The descriptions were like he was hiding even in his thoughts. Made me want to know everything about the Vietnam war (especially the parts that weren't taught in school). Best spy novel I've ever read just due to the psychology of the main character. The author made such smart choices consistently and that made the book feel unique.