The Sympathizer

A Novel

By: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Narrated by: Francois Chau

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016

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 individual loyalties.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

©2015 Viet Thanh Nguyen. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

A clinical eye for the hypochondria of exile

This is a novel about the Vietnam War. But it is unique in that: a) there are no Americans in it, and b) the war is already over. For everybody except the Vietnamese, that is.

We have come to think of the Vietnam War as an American conflict. Donald Goldstein deemed it “the most traumatic experience for the United States in the twentieth century”). How much more must it be so for the Vietnamese themselves? We don’t think too much about that question. (Try Googling “Vietnam conflict”. You’ll get more references to 60’s protest music than to Vietnamese society.)

But the themes are even more profound than that. This is not just a novel about a shooting war in southeast Asia; it is about the conflict between the individual and the state. To what extent does the culture in which we are raised supply the social environment and physical habitat we require to flourish?

Viet Thanh Nguyen has mastered the art of writing fiction from the viewpoint of displaced persons. Some authors – Faulkner, Steinbeck – illuminate a region through the eyes of its denizens. Nguyen’s perspective is the opposite – he studies the individual by removing him from his natural habitat and analyzing what happens to him.

In “The Sympathizer”, Nguyen studies a varied population of Vietnamese displaced by the war. The largest cohort is composed of ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) officers and their families exiled to southern California after the fall of Saigon. But there are also individual specimens of alienated NVA/VLF partisans: one man estranged from family and friends by horrible disfigurement suffered during the war; another whose humanity has been replaced by political slogans; a woman ostracized by her own family for her affair with a French priest. All observed and reported by her biracial son who is also a sort of double political agent: the most stateless and equivocal character in the whole novel.

Nguyen has a clinical eye for the symptoms that beset the uprooted - the diminution of stature they suffer when removed from their community, the despondency that sets in when they lose their place in society. Chapter 6 has a poignant passage cataloguing the humble Orange County occupations of men who once wielded military might in Vietnam. Nguyen finishes with a brilliant riff about these men “moldering in the stale air of subsidized apartments, as their testes shrivel, day by day, consumed by the metastasizing cancer called assimilation…”

But the Sympathizer sees the other side of the war’s dislocation as well. Back in Vietnam, the victors suffer their own sorts of alienation. The community in which the Vietnamese people have flourished for centuries has been replaced by a sterile and inhuman ideology.

So, does the State nourish the individual, or crush his spirit? Which is to be preferred, Imperialism or Communism? Catholicism or Capitalism? In his isolation cell in a Vietnamese re-education camp, the narrator reaches his own, searing conclusions.

Fantastic

This book is incredibly moving and brilliant. Nguyen is a master wordsmith and storyteller - highly recommend.

Relentless but beautiful writing

I think whoever called in the Vietnamese Portnoy’s Complaint had it right. Complex and incredible writing but pretty exhausting for me in the long run with a lot of philosophizing, politics and personal angst along with the back and forth on whose side our hero was really on if anyone’s, which I guess is probably the point! The politics are deep and sad. A time in history which of course our war in Vietnam screwed up even more. Our hero is of mixed race who is hated and not accepted by most, anywhere he lives. But since he’s a spy does that matter, I’m still not sure. It does help explain his ambiguity though. Also told from a very male point of view which did also wear me out by the end, his relationships or desire for certain women just ultimately all about him. And for him to have to finally mention the size of his penis...oh brother. But no spoiler alerts here you’ll have to listen to the book to find out.

wow. heavy, thoughtful story

wow. heavy, thoughtful story. a significant story which puts you deep inside Vietnam's recent past and psychology.

Tale of Two Minds

What did you love best about The Sympathizer?

What I loved best about The Sympathizer was the writing. It was poetic and epic. It was also creative in its use of a confessional. The second thing I loved best about this novel was its structure. I listened to the last and first three chapters a second time and noticed that people and things that showed up in the first chapters appeared in the last, such as a rucksack with a false bottom. Nguyen tightly wove his tale to tie everything together.

What other book might you compare The Sympathizer to and why?

I compared The Sympathizer to Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities because both books were about the excesses of revolutions. Nguyen in his second paragraph also mirrored Dickens' use of time anaphora in the opening paragraph of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, ..." Both books are about two-ness.

Other books that inspired Nguyen were Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, because the sympathizer and his friends compared their friendship to that of the famous French trio. Also, the sympathizer, a Eurasian, found sympathies with Dumas, a mulatto.

Richard Condon's brainwashing, Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate is another inspiration as well as Ron Chernow's biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton who was born a bastard and opponents never let him forget it. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man is another influence because the sympathizer speaks of his own invisibility in cultures and blending into settings and crowds like a chameleon.

What about Francois Chau’s performance did you like?

Francois Chau melted into the characters so that I saw and heard them and not him. Francois Chau is the ultimate sympathizer when it comes to performing great books.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, I wanted to listen to The Sympathizer all in one sitting. I finished it in five days.

Any additional comments?

This Pulitzer-winning novel is one of my favorite recent novels. It is also a conversation starter. I am thrilled that I listened to this book, and I highly recommend it..

To be caught in a spider web of super powers

Told from the point of view of a Vietnamese native, it gives the perspective of the lose /lose situation the French then American wars put them in and how dehumanizing and futile it all was. Written very well it is not depressing, despite the subject matter.

Priceless

The thought provoking themes in this book are so important they are priceless. It was not easy to listen to, but I am happy to have done so.

Excellent listen

I enjoyed this audiobook very much. it's a novel I've had on my reading list for a long time, but I'm actually glad I listened to it rather than read it. the narrator's voice and accent brought the main character to life for me. There were parts that were very difficult to listen to, but war is a very difficult reality, so those parts that are graphic and sad are necessary. There was never a moment I was bored. Every bit had my attention. Highly recommend, but for mature audiences.

Identity

This novel is timely as we struggle as a nation with or past, present and future identity. The Sympathizer is a novel about a man and a nation struggling it's just that. I could not put this book down both listening to it and reading it as time may allow. The narrator is excellent and does not interfere with the voice of the book. Vietnam Than Nguyen wove a complex narrative and pieces of history and identity into a novel that flowed like water. I could not stop reading or thinking about it. Although I knew a fair amount about the war, the resistance movement post war was new to me as were the details of the reeducation camps.

Astonishing!

At once visceral and ethereal, Francois Chau's narration truly engulfs you in the haunting and occasionally hilarious universe of this text. Viet Thahn Nguyen is an absolute force of an author & I can't wait to read whatever he writes next.