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The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen Books

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The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen Books

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is simply superb. Written with an unflinching eye and great humor, it is a brilliant and chilling look into the hearts and minds of men and the cruelty we inflict upon each other. The first 50 or so pages are devoted to the introduction of the Captain; a mole in South Vietnam's special forces. He is also a bastard, and half-breed, with a Vietnamese mother he adores and a French father (who also happens to be a Roman Catholic priest) he despises. He is a microcosm of a homeland divided in half--with a dual nature and opposites that seem to only attract loathing or disdain.

This is the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam war and the dislocation to America told from an Asian perspective, and a story non-Asian Americans should read if only for that viewpoint. But there is so much more: brilliant writing and beautiful prose that is often hilarious, and always thought-provoking. "I calmed the tremor in my gut. I was in close quarters with some representative of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit." Or, "you must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp, or a reservation or a plantation."

This is not an easy book to read--and no, not because there aren't quotation marks. God help some of these reviewers if they ever pick up Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. At times though the scenes of torture and rape are sickening and the author's pov about American hegemony (cultural and political) is going to disturb many. But it is challenging in the very best way. The Sympathizer does what great literature is supposed to do--force us out of our comfort zone to rethink assumptions. This wonderful, disturbing, challenging novel will do more than that--it will affirm something indomitable and essential about us all--a desire to carry on, and to live.


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The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen Books Reviews

What an astonishing read! The author clearly wanted to give a voice and real representation to Vietnamese people. He accomplished his goal, but just as his hero is a man of two minds, Nguyen's book is about Vietnam and everywhere. It is about Vietnamese people and everyone. When I was growing up, there was a saying that came out of Russia, "Under the Czar it was man against man. But now, since the glorious Marxist revolution, it is exactly the opposite!" So true in this book as well.
Still the book tells a unique story while it is telling an everywhere story, and it is telling it in prose that is so beautifully written, it is almost poetry. And to have such a poetic soul with such a dark and at times, grim tale, is magic indeed!
The Sympathizer is a very witty novel narrated by a Franco-Vietnamese communist spy in the South Vietnamese intelligence department. He (who is nameless) is American-educated and ends up going to America after the fall of Saigon. The third dimension of the novel is added by the narrator's dual nature and ability to see both sides of every conflict. As such he is very ironical and even snarky, especially about America, but also about Vietnam. The style is quite fizzy and engaging.

The problem with the story is that it is not the revelation the author thinks it is. In an interview in the back of the book Nguyen says he hopes the novel will make people "uncomfortable in a good way." However, I doubt that many of his readers harbor any illusions about America's involvement in the Vietnam war. Yes, we dropped Napalm. Yes, we killed kids. Yes, we taught the South Vietnamese "advanced interrogation techniques" (i.e. a more sophisticated form of torture). This is not news. In addition, Nguyen's readers surely know that the South Vietnamese government was cruel and hopelessly corrupt, and that when the North took over, they were even worse, because they were cruel and fanatics who tried to "re-educate" people.

The ending is a bit of a let-down because the narrator ends up with a cosmic, comic insight into the universe and politics that really isn't all that insightful. I would still recommend this novel for its style and for the personality of the narrator. But not for its supposed revelations about history or the cosmos.
The Sympathizer is a powerful novel, taking as its subject the final days and aftermath of the Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of a North Vietnamese spy who is also the aide to a top ranking South Vietnamese general.

The mole (never named) was educated in the United States before returning to Vietnam and signing on as a Viet Cong spy. He accompanies the general to the United States after the fall of Saigon and continues his espionage work there. He ultimately returns to Vietnam in an ill-fated attempt to establish a counter-insurgency on behalf of the general.

I found the novel to be highly educational, as I’d never read such an account of the Vietnam War from the viewpoint of the Vietnamese. The refugee experience was largely unknown to me. While the final 50-100 pages are among the most powerful, containing acts of psychological and physical torture, they are presented in an almost stream of consciousness narrative which can become tiresome to wade through.

Certainly a worthy novel, however I can imagine that many might not enjoy it.
I read this book as part of a monthly book club's reading list; I was disappointed in it, and marvel that it earned a Pulitzer Prize. This book took me back to the Vietnam era and the Boat People era, and that is a time when, in real life (as well as in books) there were few sympathetic characters. The book includes a send-up of Apocalypse Now, another Vietnam-era story with no sympathetic characters. So, while this might be true-to-life (in some ways I'm sure it is), this isn't a life I'm eager to revisit. Normally I don't down-rate books, as I have no desire to hurt other authors, but since this one won a Pulitzer, there's vanishingly little chance that my review will hurt the author or the book's sales, I want to warn readers that this is tough, gritty, disturbing and powerful (but not in a good way).
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is simply superb. Written with an unflinching eye and great humor, it is a brilliant and chilling look into the hearts and minds of men and the cruelty we inflict upon each other. The first 50 or so pages are devoted to the introduction of the Captain; a mole in South Vietnam's special forces. He is also a bastard, and half-breed, with a Vietnamese mother he adores and a French father (who also happens to be a Roman Catholic priest) he despises. He is a microcosm of a homeland divided in half--with a dual nature and opposites that seem to only attract loathing or disdain.

This is the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam war and the dislocation to America told from an Asian perspective, and a story non-Asian Americans should read if only for that viewpoint. But there is so much more brilliant writing and beautiful prose that is often hilarious, and always thought-provoking. "I calmed the tremor in my gut. I was in close quarters with some representative of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit." Or, "you must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp, or a reservation or a plantation."

This is not an easy book to read--and no, not because there aren't quotation marks. God help some of these reviewers if they ever pick up Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. At times though the scenes of torture and rape are sickening and the author's pov about American hegemony (cultural and political) is going to disturb many. But it is challenging in the very best way. The Sympathizer does what great literature is supposed to do--force us out of our comfort zone to rethink assumptions. This wonderful, disturbing, challenging novel will do more than that--it will affirm something indomitable and essential about us all--a desire to carry on, and to live.