The Sympathizer

By: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Narrated by: Francois Chau

Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2016.

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 story, 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.

©2016 Viet Thanh Nguyen (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

Critic Reviews

"A fierce novel written in a refreshingly high style and charged with intelligent rage." ( Financial Times)
"[A] dark and exciting debut novel.... Black humour seeps through these pages." ( Wall Street Journal)

The Unknown Underlined by the Unspoken

I know I know, ideas above my station! From Child, Rankin and Cornwell to Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut novel! The thing is when I saw the 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner unrated at the time, possibly unread and seemingly unloved it just seemed too much of a curio to turn my head from. I'm not even going to begin to pretend that I know what makes a good prize winning novel, that's for much wiser minds than mine to weigh up and decide upon.

But did the book entertain me? Hell yes! Some of the passages have genuine humour and much of the book is blackly satirical and just as an example includes the lead character's discovery of the sexuality of raw squid! I'll say no more on that but a myriad topics get covered and while these characters existed half a world apart from me it seems, shock horror, that there are more similarities between the peoples of the world than disparities.

Did the book make me think? Yes again. This does descend to some pretty dark stuff including incidents of violence, conscience, political expedience and the mental cruelty of torture. Our written narrator is not only of mixed parentage, something looked down upon in the Vietnamese culture but also a Viet Cong double agent! That's enough to stretch anyone's mind and the author takes no prisoners while discussing both Western and Oriental culture.

Did the book excite me? Yes, there are some tense scenes including the early escape from Vietnam which was particularly well done albeit tragic in nature.

So was it great? I suspect as books go it genuinely is. So much so that I will return to it as I have no doubt that multiple re-readings would unearth more gems from this multi-layered tome. As an audiobook it's not perfect though and it does take considerable concentration. At least by my standards! Francois Chau's mildly accented English gives the feel of authenticity but otherwise paints the text in fairly arid tones. I am sure I lost nuance in some of the more philosophical and humorous passages.

So, a very accomplished book and one that I am very glad that I have completed. So much so that I will indeed give it another try some time to see what I missed first time!

13 of 16 people found this review helpful

Wonderful Voice

Narrator excellent - wonderful voice to listen to...
Never tired of his smooth voice - recommend

A revelation

I knew nothing about this author before I bought the book so It's a joy to have accidently made such a good decision. The central character who narrates the book takes pride in having learnt Engllish to a level above many native speakers and therefore the telling of his story is a linguistic tour de force. highly recommend

Overwritten

Yes, it is clever and funny, filled with a peculiar oriental wisdom and extraordinary points of wiev. But you expect something more all along the novel. I expected to know about this special state of mind a spy has. I expected to know about his communist ideas seemengly so powerful it worth being a traitor for. Insignificant details and weak anecdotes spoil the strenght of it all. Or the editors were lazy or Nguyen didn't let them work. With all its wit and emotions forgettable and too much.

Mixed views

A fascinating story about post war Vietnam refugees, with a lot of philosophical musings on the nature of race, political ideologies, & the refugee experience. A fairly dull delivery though unfortunately which spoilt it a bit for me

Moving and Profound

What is the nature of revolution? How can revolutionaries retain their humanity in the face of violent struggle? These are the themes explored through the eyes of a communist Vietnamese agent who has been assigned to spy on American allies.

interesting and well written

Gets you to a place between the two sides in the Vietnam war.
Takes you inside bias and sides.
The only drawback is of all the two-dimensional and cliched female characters, which though in part understandable as part of the main character's perspective, give him no surprises.

A person’s strength was always his weakness

If you see the world from all points of views you will be your own enemy at all points. this is an excellent book that is as bitter as the conflict it describes and the man that relates it, a sarcastic double agent, bilingual, biracial, a chameleon that loves all his colors and is not happy in any of them. He gives us a realistic retelling of the Vietnam war from the point of all the vietnamese embodied in one man, we hear all his multiplicity in an articulate story, but never really know the man as an individual just facets of a impenetrable enigma, that confesses all, while hiding in a multitude of personas.


A book that can be read as a spy story, an immigrant story, a war story, or a love story it is all of them and more. Room 101 from 1984 is so old fashion so technologically and psychologically devoid of horror compared to the reeducation camps of Vietnam, I was reading and had to look away from the page not to see all the horror, the horror.


Written in a clear language with a plot that exposes so many travesties inflicted in the name of ideals, in the disguise of culture in the truth of torture leaving the clarity of nothing.

8 of 17 people found this review helpful