The Sympathizer
By Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Release Date: 2015-04-02
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Description
Now an HBO Limited Series
from Executive Producers Park Chan-wook and Robert Downey Jr., Streaming
Exclusively on Max
Winner of the 2016
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2016 Edgar
Award for Best First Novel
Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal
for Excellence in
Fiction
One of the
New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
One
of TIME’s 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All
Time
“[A] remarkable debut novel.”—Philip
Caputo, New York Times Book Review (cover
review)
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer
Prize, a startling debut novel from a powerful new voice featuring one of the
most remarkable narrators of recent fiction: a conflicted subversive and
idealist working as a double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam
War.
The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction, as well as seven other awards, The Sympathizer is
the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller
and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The
Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a
communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese
army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and
while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is
secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.
The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of
identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love
and friendship.
Reviews
Boo
2By meggdoggParts of this book were good and I like the writing style, but overall it was a slough. It felt disjointed and depressing. I’m sure it was supposed to, but it wasn’t fun to read and the only thing I learned is that everything is corrupt and awful.An intimate perspective on a war we should never have entered!
5By Gail E KnightHas you thinking. Good book. Will have to read again!Revelatory and enlightening
5By NotyergbfAs a child of a veteran who fought in Vietnam, who died many years later of his mental wounds inflicted by the fighting of that war, I read this novel with a great deal of sympathy towards almost all of the characters. This book is the kind of novel that’s best read by students of history, because it encourages the reader to recognize that history is not a set of facts, but the perspective from which you understand those facts. I will be recommending this book to almost anyone who wishes to try to begin to comprehend a war that we are just beginning to contend with as a nation, and to anyone who wishes to understand the greater horrors of war collectively.A peek into an Asian American experience
5By bio teacher 2I had the good fortune of encountering Viet Than Nguyen during his high school years. I was the only Asian American teacher at the school during that time and the Asian American student population certainly wasn’t what it is today. I think The Sympathizer definitely provides a unique insight into the Vietnamese American experience, the Asian American experience in general, and maybe even the overall American experience. There are demons that inhabit all of our existences and Viet Than Nguyen has poetically afforded us an opportunity to confront some of them.Sympathizer
3By JudystepBeautifully written - his vocabulary is astonishingly large and diverse. Use of language increíble, and , of course, the story is told in totally new perspective. But book so unrelentingly brutal I often didn't want to pick it up. Yes, I know, "it's for me own good" to understand the story he tells, but please! Sympathize with the poor reader who can only bear so much torture, sadness, and remorse!Five Stars
5By Lukester2012Riveting, Unique & Spellbinding.Bill T
5By macdaddysappleA true piece of literature, and a telling portrait of a man divided, a chameleon forced to choose a color so he could live. The protagonist of this novel takes its reader to the other side of the Vietnam war, with a description of those on the other side of the bullets, of village hootches being burned, of villagers being brandished VC by other villagers,to later be shown in the media of the time and movies made since being dropped from helicopters or lying crumpled on the ground with hands still tied in a pool of blood, of the underage prostitutes in the brothels. This is the backstory behind the iconic picture of the last helicopter leaving the American embassy the failed (Flag raising of Iwo Jima) of my generation and the televised atrocities surrounding the Fall of Saigon and the Vietnam war as a whole. Yet it also tells of the pitfalls and struggles of the newly arrived war torn people's to assimilate into Western society, at times with similar contrasts to the mistrust held toward the current refugee crisis.
