The Committed

A Novel

By: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Narrated by: Francois Chau

Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

The long-awaited new novel from one of America’s most highly regarded contemporary writers, The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition. The Sympathizer will need all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to prevail.

Both literary thriller and novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen’s position in the firmament of American letters.

This audiobook is a sequel to The Sympathizer.

Copyright © 2021 by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. Epigraph by Rithy Panh with Christophe Bataille, excerpted from The Elimination, translated by John Cullen. Copyright © 2014 by Rithy Panh. Reprinted by permission of Other Press. “Seasons in the Sun.” Written by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen. Published by Edward B. Marks Music Company (BMI). All rights administered by Round Hill Carlin, LLC. “Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi.” Words and Music by Jacques Dutronc and Jacques Lanzmann. Copyright (c) 1966 Alpha Editions Musicales. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

©2021 (see above) (P)2021 Audible, Inc.

Put on your thinking cap.

Francois Chau is absolutely fabulous narrating this complex novel transporting the reader into Paris and the many characters that inhabit it smoothly alternating between English, French and Vietnamese bringing these diverse cultures to life. It’s complicated, very very complicated.

Likeable bad person

A survey of Western and Asian cultures in the 1970s voiced by a charming transnational person who commits crimes while speaking for ordinary Vietnamese. I appreciated the perspective.

weird

well written, interesting view. not what I expected but I enjoyed. worth the time to listen

If you are mixed Asian please read this

I can’t put into words how much I loved The Sympathizer and The Committed. I recommend you read them in order and have the time and space the way Nguyen so beautifully depicts so many facets and dilemmas that go through the mind of the main character. I am hoping for a 3rd book!

Kudos

Revealing ourselves to ourselves. Brilliant. Lovely. Difficult. Painful. I honor all you have been through enabling you to give to us, the readers, these revelations. Thank you.

Thrilling and beautifully written

Loved this book and could not stop listening to it. It gave interesting insights on Vietnam and Vietnamese diaspora culture.

Good story, sometimes tediously clever

I enjoyed this less than the preceding novel. The plays on language which clearly amused and satisfied the author were often glib, and with constant repetition, tiresome.

Rewarding but confusing

I admire and learn so much from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s criticism of colonialism and imperialism, and their intersections with misogyny, that the book is infinitely fascinating. As with The Sympathizer, I find his plots and myriad characters hard to follow and the plot elusive. But his references, analogies, metaphors are so exact, it’s hard to put the book down. I haven’t thought of Althusser for a while and loved Nguyen’s use of ISA to explain the duality of repression.
Amazing insights.

Being of two minds is normal

Hell is a simple word but we need explorations like Committed to relearn and understand why we have such a concept of being. Nguyen takes us down the paths that ask what is and uses nihilism (even when we don’t believe in anything). Excellent double entendre throughout, a necessity when being of two minds. And being nonWestern in aspect, the two need not be in opposition or dualistic, but can be different cultural aspects of one point in time
Nguyen should be more celebrated and recognized. More people need to SEE into his stories.

Reached me in a way Pynchon never could.

Really brings home the difference between political theory and practice. The setting is wonderfully immersive, the details telling.
Francois Chau is somehow perfect as the narrator.