Recommendation: The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s blistering debut novel, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize, lives up to the considerable hype.

The story follows an unnamed narrator during the end of the Vietnam War who’s stuck between two worlds and belongs to neither. He’s a North Vietnamese spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army. He’s of mixed-race heritage — half French and half Vietnamese — and is viewed with suspicion by #purebloods on #bothsides. He’s an ardent communist with a soft spot for capitalism. All these tensions and contradictions are captured in the novel’s killer opening line: “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.”

What I loved: The deep first-person narration is incredibly fun and darkly funny, and our conflicted hero tosses out one-liners, macro-aggressions, and sharp cultural observations with aplomb. Despite a literary bent, there’s plenty of plot, too, which drives the action from the fall of Saigon to a Vietnamese immigrant community in Los Angeles to an unhinged film set in the Philippines.

What I didn’t: It’s clear on page one our nameless narrator is writing a sort of confession to his mysterious “Commandant.” As the book reaches its climax, however, that narrative structure collapses, and Nguyen plays with form and point-of-view in unusual and unexpected ways. I appreciated his ambition and panache but would’ve preferred to see the novel stay consistent through the ending. Of course, that’s just, like, my opinion, man, and your mileage may vary.

Final verdict: Misgivings about the finale aside, I immensely enjoyed this book and strongly recommend checking it out. The Committed, a sequel published in 2021, is sitting on my bookshelf, patiently waiting for my ungrateful children and decaying condo to cooperate with my literary lifestyle.

Related media: The Sympathizer was adapted into a limited series on HBO Max (or whatever it’s called) earlier this year. I watched the first and fourth episodes and I’m sad, but not surprised, to say the film version is a poor facsimile of the novel. Read the book, skip the show.