viet thanh nguyen the sympathizer review

Sometime brutally harsh with descriptions of torture, at other times with sardonic humor, The Sympathizer is a well-written philosophical look at racism, brutality in both war and “peace”, and survival. According to Nguyens website, the book Nothing Ever Dies 'examines how the so-called Vietnam War has been remembered by many countries and people, from the US to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea.' 2 Kirkus Reviews has also called the book 'a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget. Nguyen deftly portrays our protagonist’s two minds - sympathetic to both the southern vietnamese culture and to the communist cause of an American mindset and longing for his homeland of friend, lover, and confidant in the shadow of betrayal.

One of the most interesting aspects of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed, sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer, is how much of a critique it is of three cultures: Vietnamese, American, and French. Having spent his university years in the Unites States, he is able to more easily navigate the cultural differences than his fellow refugees, though racism is pervasive throughout - from his own countrymen as he, himself is mixed race, and from Americans’ distrust of the ‘yellow’ infiltration of the “Boat People”. This novel is acutely prescient not only about the archetypal American/Trumpian neurosis, which it satirises so mercilessly, but also about the political. MaThough skillfully written, this buzzed-about sequel to The Sympathizer falls far short of its predecessor. As an attache to a high ranking Vietnamese General, he has access to top secret information, American intelligence, and a ticket to the United States after the fall of Saigon. He’s half-French, half-Vietnamese, an Army Captain in the Vietnamese Army, while spying for the Communists. A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his. The Sympathizer’s narrator is a double agent - a man of “two minds”.

Viet thanh nguyen the sympathizer review