The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

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 general to the United States as a double agent for communist North Vietnam after the collapse of South Vietnam. Nguyen as a writer tries in his writings to write the effects of the end of the Vietnam War on Vietnamese people (Adelfatah 2022). Nguyen is critical of how the American movie industry portrays the Vietnam War (Adelfatah 2022). This appears in the novel when the Sympathizer is sent by the General to advise the filming of a fictional American movie about the Vietnam War that is being filmed in the Philippines. Nguyen uses his novel, The Sympathizer to explore his interest in the aftermath of the war on Vietnamese refugees and how people remember the Vietnam War. Nguyen explores how people remember the terrible actions they did because of a war. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer is a well-done and interesting novel. Works Cited: Abdelfatah, Rund, Arablouei, Ramtin, Caine, Julie, Kaplen-Levenson, Laine, Wu, Lawrence, Khurana, Mansee, Davarajan, Kumari, & Steinberg, Anya. 2022. “All Wars are fought twice,” National Public Radio-Throughline, March 24. Retrieved: November 4, 2022. (How refugee stories reveal the true toll of war: Throughline: NPR).

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.