371 pages
English language
Published June 28, 2015
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. The novel received generally positive acclaim from critics, and it was named a New York Times Editor's Choice.The novel incorporates elements from 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 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. The novel received generally positive acclaim from critics, and it was named a New York Times Editor's Choice.The novel incorporates elements from 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, titled The Committed, was published on March 2, 2021.
4.5 really! read for the new sociology book club! It was very very good, gripping, incredibly harrowing at times. The bits on Hollywood and representation really hit, and I hope to think through them some more. I thought it was funny that the sympathizer had to remind us that he had a big penis at least two or three times, including when he was about to get horribly tortured.
