The Sympathizer

THE SYMPATHIZER
by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Award: Carnegie Winner 2016, Pulitzer Winner 2016

Nomination: PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2016

Date Read: October 9, 2016

While I can understand why this novel won the Carnegie and Pulitzer, I found this novel trying to be too many things all at once - drama, comedy, political commentary, spy novel - that, to me, it was somewhat of a jumbled mess. Again, just my opinion and how this hit me in my first read.

The narrator, who has no name, has so many misadventures, it's difficult to follow. The novel presents as a flashback to a forced confession in a prison camp and sweeps from his childhood in Vietnam as a half Vietnamese/half white child, to college in the US, back to Vietnam during the war, then back to the US as a mole, then back to Vietnam. I got whiplash.

To recap for my own benefit, The Sympathizer is the flashback of a political prisoner, who has been coerced into confessing to his crimes. The main character, who remains unnamed, is a half-Vietnamese, half-French undercover communist agent who is in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. Although raised in Vietnam, he was educated in the US and maintained close connections to both the South Vietnamese authorities and the US government. He has been secretly funneling information back to the communists in North Vietnam. As Saigon falls, the narrator arranges for himself, his best friend Bon, and the General he was working with to evacuate. The survivors of the group are sent to LA, where they react in differing ways to the change in culture. The General handles the transition badly, finding work at a liquor store but remaining obsessed with the war he left behind. The narrator becomes a clerk at Occidental College and has affairs with both a coworker and the General’s daughter, Lana. 

During this time, he continues communicating with Man, his handler back in Vietnam. He soon is offered the chance to consult on a Hollywood film set during the Vietnam War, and sees it as an opportunity to present an alternative perspective on the war, which he ultimately fails to do. The narrator defies Man’s orders to stay in the US and accompanies the exiled troops back to Vietnam. He and Bon are once again joined together in battle, and the narrator saves his best friend’s life. Both are soon captured and imprisoned by Vietnamese forces and taken to a prison encampment, where the protagonist writes his confession. Although his communist superiors expect to hear him plead for mercy and claim to be a loyal soldier of the regime, he instead reveals a complex and nuanced picture of the events that have led him to his imprisonment, including a painful childhood and friendships with those who are supposed to be considered his enemies. His confession is rejected and he is brought before the party commissar, shockingly someone he knows well. He orders the narrator tortured, and he is forced to confess to many crimes, including the rape of a female communist agent and the murder of his own father. The ultimate goal here is to teach his former agent that nothingness itself was more precious than freedom. The story ends with the narrator, now a broken man, being sent away from Vietnam among a large group of boat people, just another nameless refugee.

I learned a lot from this novel about the Vietnam war, it's impact on the Vietnamese people, the political fallout, and how the war has impacted life for Vietnamese today. Perhaps the reason I never fell in love with this novel is that I reject the central premise of nothingness. Yet, the ending is incredibly poignant and I should give this another read. 

I can say that I think the author is incredible. I listened to a lengthy interview with him on NPR and was captivated by his life experiences, having moved to the US when he was only 4 years old. I learned that he eventually settled in San Jose, CA, which is where I am originally from, and his parents opened the first Vietnamese grocery store there and he grew up helping his parents. He is an incredibly accomplished author.