The Sympathizer

A Novel

By: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Narrated by: Francois Chau

Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

The Great Vietnamese Novel(Port)Nguyen's Complaint

Any additional comments?

This is a great book. I mean, really great.

Our narrator is a divided self. He is born a half European, half Vietnamese in the North of Vietnam, and then, despite being positioned to welcome Western influence in his country, aligns himself with the communists before the Vietnam War. Then, because of his excellence as a student and his not looking like what people would expect, he’s cast as a sleeper agent and rises to be aide-de-camp to a key South Vietnamese general. Most of the novel takes place in the United States where he finds himself secretly supporting the communist government and chronicling the exiles’ dreams of returning to Vietnam and creating a new counter-revolution.

The structure of the novel reflects that fundamental schizophrenia. Half of it is brooding and historical. We revisit American atrocities in Southeast Asia, we relive a history that some of us once new well but that current generations may never have known, and we get a first-hand glimpse at the horrifying re-education camps. It is, as I gather at least some critics have seen it, a history of the Vietnam War and its aftermath – in English – told from the other side.

The other part is deeply personal, though, and that’s the half that seems to me to take this from a very good novel into the realm of greatness. Our narrator cannot help but map the two halves of his identity – a Vietnamese loyalist willing to murder on behalf of his theoretical cause and a Westernized refugee/immigrant addled by sex and aware of the ambition of his ego.

Somehow, through all of that, the novel has moments of inspired hilarity. At one point, imprisoned in a camp, he contemplates the meal digesting in his stomach and labels the shit forming in his intestine another “brick” to help build the revolution. At the end [apologies for a kind of SPOILER] he finds a manic joy in deconstructive reading of “Nothing is more important than life and liberty,” turning the empty slogan into a powerful, almost-pun that undermines revolutionary thought and sloganeering. At another, echoing Portnoy’s Complaint, he recounts how he would sometimes masturbate into squid, a delicacy his Western father rarely doled out to his impoverished Vietnamese mother. It’s a tour-de-force scene, conflating an “f-the-father” Freudianism with Marxist revolution and good old fashioned teenage horniness.

In that light, a good part – though not all – of this novel works for me as what I call (Port)Nguyen’s Complaint. The two novels share a structure: Roth’s narrative is cast as an American Jew talking to his psychoanalyst while Nguyen’s is of a double-agent writing his confession for his communist allies in a reeducation camp. Both also deal with unreliable first-person narrators, characters who have reason to cast themselves as abject examples of what they once aspired to and yet who have also accomplished substantial things.

I think there’s a lot to learn in casting the two novels in conversation (maybe I have an academic project) as well. Roth, writing as an American in America, has the luxury of presenting his story as, implicitly, the story of a new sort of American. Nguyen, writing as a Vietnamese unable to ignore the intellectual gravity of the Western-American experience, can’t stand on such stable ground. Portnoy may eventually come to a kind of self-recognition at the end (though whether it’s a break though is open to interpretation), but our narrator here goes face-to-face with the failings of the Vietnamese communist project and the pangs of that country’s early rebuilding. Roth is granted what the communist’s might have called the privilege of Western decadence, while Nguyen has to reach through layers of irony just to reach the position of irony where Roth begins.

This one is already on my list of books to re-read in the next few years. Like its protagonist, it’s split along many axes: Vietnamese and American, coherent and careening, brooding and comic. With all that, it surely deserves a second reading too.

Excellent Book Nearly Ruined by Narrater

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Flat, no differentiation of characters. No emotion. The story was excellent and compelling despite the very poor narration

Powerful and Shocking

The narration was incredibly well done and I think the book is well appreciated in Audible format.
I liked the going from present to past and back style. At first it was confusing but as it progressed it went along well. And it is amazing to get close to the end and learn what you thought wasn't always what was!

Powerful story, well-told

Viet Thanh Nguyen's plot is ingenious -- a Vietnamese communist spy in America after the war. His insights into American culture from this perspective is amazing. But he also makes you think long and hard about the morality of American foreign policy that creates such havoc all over the globe. Highly recommended.

I never quite got it

The writing was superb but I never quite got the story. I made myself finish the book just in case it was a slow start. It didn't work for me. I heard the author interviewed on NPR and was intrigued. The one big take away was the history of Vietnam and more about it's people. As a child of the 60's and 70's the story was very valuable.

I read many reviews when I was done so perhaps to fill in missing pieces and I was struck with how many viewers thought that the narrators voice was monotone and hard to listen to. It strikes me that perhaps that the performance is the way the Vietnamese read is more flat and that we Americans (once again) are asking for others to conform to our expectations? Do we continue to narrow in our understandings of others?

Compelling, complex and never dull!

Though all the characters felt like real people, the first person narrator brought new levels of complexity and intrigue. The writing is witty, poetic and at times viciously satirical—but that never detracts from the tension of the story. In my mind this novel is up there with Vonnegut’s Breakfast Of Champions and Camus’ The Fall.

Captivating narration - Painful Viet pronunciation

Firstly, I appreciate how Mr. Chau being half Vietnamese himself, his backgrounds and life experiences have put him in a unique position to narrate the story of someone caught between worlds like the Sympathizer. Secondly, he delievered the tension, jokes, and songs well, carrying the dark humor of the author effortlessly - you really feel like you're listening to Captain's lifetime of torment through his chapped lips. However, it really takes me out of the story every time he butchered the name of a place or thing.

Linguistically, I understand that it is just impossible logistics-wise to switch to proper Vietnamese from the inertia of a whole paragraph in English. Therefore, I did expect some Anglicisation, but the 'd' in 'ao dai' can easily Anglicize to /j/ or /z/, not a jarring /ð/. Now, imagine listening to "the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, ANH OI" and the most seductive words in your language sounded too much like the pig's chant in Old McDonald's famous farm.

Perhaps there is a convention for audiobooks that readers would just read a foreign word like any English speaker would? If so, petition for change - at least for first person, supposedly-native-narrator books. I can tolerate an American account of the Vietnam war with all the places' names wrong because, although there's mental strain to reverse decode the place names, it's authentic to a foreign perspective and no suspension of disbelief is needed. Here, what make things doubly disappointing are 1. there aren't that many Vietnamese words 2. and, perhaps unfortunate for Mr. Chau, the author Viet Thanh Nguyen is one to put a lot of emotional weight and prose anticipation for each of their entrances, which fall absolutely flat when the narrator doesn't know how to say these things supposedly so important to him.

Therefore, as much as I have enjoyed this rendition, I'll just buy Kindle for Viet Thanh Nguyen's next books.

Dark story about one man's choices

Beautifully read novel that explores identity, morality, friendship and loyalty during and after the Vietnam War.

written beautifully, narrated brilliantly

This story was fascinating and engaging and the narrator gave perfect voice to the protagonist. Not all books are suitable for listening but this book with this narrator are what makes audible books worthwhile. I cannot recommend it enough.

Engaging and harrowing view into Refugee POV

Would you listen to The Sympathizer again? Why?

I would gladly listen to The Sympathizer again for the sheer complexity of cultural exchange and balance that was included, as well as the clear prose laced with humor, satire, and critique of American culture.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Sympathizer?

One of the most memorable moments in The Sympathizer was not my favorite, but was so powerful and moving it stands out in my mind. When the main character kills Sonny, I found myself devastated both for the killer as well as the victim, and even more upset at the general for forcing such to take place.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favorite scene in the story is the time that the Captain spends in the Philippines working on the movie. I found the personal discovery that he goes through as well as the biting frustration and anger I felt towards the author of the script to be a poignant moment that I knew would be critical to the Captain's later outcome.

If you could take any character from The Sympathizer out to dinner, who would it be and why?

I would take the Captain out to dinner. I wished I could be a part of so many of the conversations he was a part of in the story. I would like to engage him in discussion and debate. I would like to have learned more about him as a person.

Any additional comments?

I can't recommend this story enough. I loved it, and didn't want it to end.