The Sympathizer

The first paragraph is worth quoting extensively: "I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides."

The narrator starts out with a split identity as the son of a French priest and his young Vietnamese housekeeper ("not half of anything, twice of everything!" she tells him). His talent for divided sympathies serves him well in his career as a spy, first in the household of the (South Vietnamese) General, then in the exile community in California. The capsule review I read in the New Yorker calls this a comedy, focusing show more on the episode in which the captain serves as a consultant to a loathsome, thinly veiled Francis Ford Coppola as he makes his war movie in the Philippines, but the satire didn't impress me: too broad, too predictable. What I loved was the tragic narrator himself, wry and cynical with a stubborn idealistic streak, like the creation of some Vietnamese Graham Greene with Nabokovian insight into American culture and language. show less

Loved it. Took me a while to get into it, but oh so worth it. This is the story of the Viet Nam war from a perspective we never get. The protagonist is a communist spy within the South Vietnamese/US alliance. Early in the book, Saigon falls and he escapes to the US where his work continues.

This is a powerful novel as it is a study in the complex divisions within one individual, mirroring those in the world more generally. Our protagonist has a Vietnamese mother and a French father (a priest no less) and, despite his mother telling him he isn't "half" of anything...he is "twice" as much, he has trouble fitting in. He was educated in the US, where he was seen as Vietnamese. In Viet Nam, he is similarly perceived as foreign. He is trained show more by the CIA to interrogate and "break" the very revolutionaries he is working for. He has two childhood friends, his blood brothers: Man, his handler as an agent; and Bon, a strong anticommunist. The story progresses as the narrator details his confession of his actions and inactions during the war.

This book is so well written, with dark humour and profound insights. There is a sequel, which I'll be reading very soon. show less

″They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.″ Marx spoke of the oppressed class that was not politically conscious enough to see itself as a class, but was anything ever more true of the dead…?

Much has been written about the Vietnam War, but the vast majority of the voices heard in America are American. Nguyen′s novel is an attempt to give another perspective, yet that perspective is of someone who came to the states as a child and lost no family in the war. So although his name is Vietnamese, his approach is academic, not biographical.

The entire novel′s tension rests on the dichotomies of a character who is half-French and half-Vietnamese, a Viet Cong soldier in a ARVN uniform, American-educated but show more Vietnamese-born, trained by the CIA to interrogate the very revolutionaries he is trying to save.

I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.

Thus begins the novel and the protagonist′s confession. He is in an isolation cell writing for an unknown commandant—not an auspicious beginning. His story begins with the fall of Saigon and his escape with his commanding officer, a general in the South Vietnamese secret police. Although he has been serving the general for years and is a trusted aide, he is actually a mole for the North Vietnamese communist army. His handler orders him to leave the country with the general and continue reporting on the general′s activities, and any attempts to rekindle the war, from America. The plot bogs down a bit in the middle, but picks up again for an intense, page-turning ending.

Nguyen′s writing is clever and darkly humorous. I often stopped and reread a sentence simply for the pleasure of the construction. The book has elements of metafiction: a self-conscious novel that is written as a confession by a narrator whose life is a lie. The war is being recast as a movie starring American heroes and nameless, unspeaking Vietnamese extras, on the one hand, and as a communist victory for the people by political commissars in the reeducation camps, on the other. Readers of [Invisible Man] and [The Quiet American] will find echoes throughout, as will watchers of Apocalypse Now. Nguyen tackles issues of identity, race, representation, and both individual and societal culpability head on, sparing no one—American, South Vietnamese, or communist—from his glare. show less

Our unnamed narrator begins with the fall of Saigon and the escape of South Vietnamese refugees to America, where he lives and works while working as a spy for the Viet Cong.

This is a book in which no single word is wasted, its meaning important and often double, beginning with the title itself. The narrator is a sympathizer both as a spy but also in his self - he is the son of a French priest and a Vietnamese woman, and is not one or the other. The unique perspective of an outsider allows him to sympathize with both sides, leaving you unsure exactly how much to trust his narration, a confession he is making to the Commandant. Equally brilliantly executed and brutal in its descriptions of war and the aftermath, this Pulitzer show more Prize-winning title is deserving a careful, slow read. Would I reread it? No. But I'm in awe of the author's way with words, and would definitely recommend it for book clubs or read another by him. show less

Loved this! A twisty-turny spy thriller about a Vietnamese double agent that also explores the American immigration experience. Also, reading the gruesomely graphic torture scene at the end of the book whilst sitting in a peaceful public park admiring the sunset on a mild spring evening is one of my favourite incongruous reading memories!

This book will sit with me for a long time. As someone who studies the Cold War—that “experiment they call, with a straight face, the Cold War” (344)—I responded to this book both academically and personally.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s nuance is masterful—his pro-antagonist, if you will, is one of the more interesting characterizations I’ve come across in recent literature. While there are brief moments of heavy-handedness, most of the book is filled with stunning language, vivid imagery, and beautifully-crafted moments of sardonic humor.

This is the hero’s journey with a twist. As Nguyen said recently at a talk at Radcliffe, revolutions often lead to disillusionment, but that doesn’t mean they fail and can’t continue show more (paraphrase). In some sense, Nguyen highlights the sense of the word “revolution” as it appears in physics and makes a compelling case that we are often our own axis for that revolution—something I think the main character comes to understand.

This is an important book to read for multiple reasons, but specifically to understand, at least in some way, the many angles of being a refugee. While a spy, the nameless narrator is also a refugee, and Nguyen peels back the multiple layers of that relationship. show less

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 show more 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. show less