Tournament of Books discussion

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen


About the Book (from the book's description on GR)

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.


About the Author (from the author's website)

Viet was born in Ban Me Thuot, Viet Nam (now spelled Buon Me Thuot after 1975, a year which brought enormous changes to many things, including the Vietnamese language). He came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 with his family and was initially settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, one of four such camps for Vietnamese refugees. From there, he moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived until 1978.

Seeking better economic opportunities, his parents moved to San Jose, California, and opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores in the city. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, San Jose had not yet been transformed by the Silicon Valley economy, and was in many ways a rough place to live, at least in the downtown area where Viet’s parents worked. He commemorates this time in his short story “The War Years” (TriQuarterly 135/136, 2009).

Viet attended St. Patrick School and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. After high school, he briefly attended UC Riverside and UCLA before settling on UC Berkeley, where he graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He stayed at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in English, moved to Los Angeles for a teaching position at the University of Southern California, and has been there ever since. He is an associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

People not familiar with Vietnamese culture sometimes have a hard time pronouncing his surname. The wikipedia entry on Nguyen has audio pronunciations of the name in Vietnamese. He favors the southern pronunciation of his name, which with the full diacritical marks is Việt Thanh Nguyễn. For those in the United States, though, the Anglicization of Nguyen leads to further issues. Is it pronounced Noo-yen? Or Win? It’s never pronounced Ne-goo-yen. The Win version is closer to the Vietnamese and seems to be the favored choice for Vietnamese Americans.



Other Links

• Author's website: http://vietnguyen.info

• Review -- New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/boo...

• Interview -- NPR: "A Dark, Funny — And Vietnamese — Look At The Vietnam War": http://www.npr.org/2015/04/11/3987285...

• Review -- Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2015/07/the-symp...

Have you read this novel already? If not, will you be doing so soon? Please let us know your thoughts!!

I enjoyed The Sympathizer and I am definitely interested in Nguyen's future work, but I thought there were some pretty significant pacing/structure issues in the second half, which kept it from being a five-star read for me.

Gayla wrote: "I enjoyed The Sympathizer and I am definitely interested in Nguyen's future work, but I thought there were some pretty significant pacing/structure issues in the second half, which kept it from bei..."

I absolutely agree with you about the pacing in the second half, but it only pulled the book down to a 4.5 star read for me.

I've read four of the tournament books so far, and of those, this is the one I think is the most likely to go to the finals. I agree with the pacing issues, but I thought for a philosophical novel the pacing and story structure were pretty strong.

It was as close to a 5 star book as I read all year.

Tiffany wrote: "I've read four of the tournament books so far, and of those, this is the one I think is the most likely to go to the finals. I agree with the pacing issues, but I thought for a philosophical novel ..."

Thanks, Tiffany. I'm pulling for this one too.

Voicing the apparently minority opinion here...

I'm only about 60% through the book, and it has dragged for me the whole time. I found the moviemaking portion interesting and thought-provoking, but lacking in satisfactory resolution.

One other fairly minor complaint but that has stuck with me: I'm mildly irritated by the author's choice to repeatedly refer to one character as "the crapulent major" and only as "the crapulent major". The annoyance of the repetition is compounded by the fact that I suspect he originally meant "corpulent major", as the man's fatness seems far more salient in the book than whatever drinking problem he may or may not have. Anyone else?

SPOILER QUESTION: If this is not appropriate for this thread, please delete or let me know and I will delete.





Hey! I just finished listening to this book on audio. I definitely enjoyed the book although I have one question that is troubling me. As I listened to the book, I can't skim to find my answer.


Who was the female agent that the Captain witnessed being tortured? Was it his mother? Or was it just some unknown communist that he allowed to be tortured?

@Mainon I felt that way to some degree for the first half (about 3/4 through now). I had the constant feeling that this is important BUT not really enjoyable. The second half has picked up more for me.

Ryan wrote: "@Mainon I felt that way to some degree for the first half (about 3/4 through now). I had the constant feeling that this is important BUT not really enjoyable. The second half has picked up more for..."
Good to know, thanks! I won't give up hope yet.
I was looking back through the passages I'd highlighted and realized that the squid masturbation scene was incredibly vivid. Props for handling that scene and then taking it to a philosophical statement about morality. That did impress me, even though i will now never look at squid the same way again.

Mainon wrote: "One other fairly minor complaint but that has stuck with me: I'm mildly irritated by the author's choice to repeatedly refer to one character as "the crapulent major" and only as "the crapulent major"

me too. it's such an odd word, it doesn't sound like what it means, and its repeated use must be for humor or possibly to indicate that the narrator isn't a native speaker (?) but it's one example of the way I felt this novel was tonally off-key, just not quite right in its tonal choices. I felt that way throughout.

The Major was not the only character he used this device on. Close relationships got names, cogs in the military machine were given descriptions only. This was definitely a choice, and one I had no problem with.

Ohenrypacey wrote: "The Major was not the only character he used this device on. Close relationships got names, cogs in the military machine were given descriptions only. This was definitely a choice, and one I had no..."

I don't remember anyone else getting an obscure adjective, though, let alone one that didn't seem particularly appropriate for the character. That's why I question the choice as to that character specifically. I didn't have any problem with the General or the darkest Marine or the Auteur (who wasn't military, incidentally) and whatnot.

Just as a fun fact, from the OED entry for "crapulent":

This word belongs in Frequency Band 2. Band 2 contains words which occur fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage. These are almost exclusively terms which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown to most people. Many are technical terms from specialized discourses.

Not that authors can't use obscure words, of course (and I enjoy learning new words) but it is very unusual to see such an obscure word figure so heavily in the narrative.

Grizzled captain, baby-faced guard, philosophical medic all come to mind. I think they reveal something about the characters or how he feels about them. For example, I think crapulent demonstrates a kind of disdain (crap) for the slovenliness associated with alcoholism. I don't think this level of writer would chose a word like crapulent without intention.

Totally-irrelevant-to-content comment: The Sympathizer has the dubious honor of being this year's TOB book chewed by one of my dogs. And not the same dog who ate the end of Ivyland. And it is a library book. Luckily, no actual content was destroyed so I'm hoping I won't have to buy a new copy plus processing.

Drew wrote: "Totally-irrelevant-to-content comment: The Sympathizer has the dubious honor of being this year's TOB book chewed by one of my dogs. And not the same dog who ate the end of Ivyland. And it is a lib..."

Do you consider the chewing a sign of approval or of distaste/desire to destroy?

With Ivyland, I think it was an expression of distaste and a desire to spare me more suffering. I'm not very far into The Sympathizer and am liking it so far so perhaps it was a sign of approval.

I can't seem to get into this one! The writing is very loose and the page-long paragraphs just make this one feel like an info-dump masquerading as a novel.

poingu wrote: "Mainon wrote: "One other fairly minor complaint but that has stuck with me: I'm mildly irritated by the author's choice to repeatedly refer to one character as "the crapulent major" and only as "th..."

This wasn't the only instance of wrong word choice but it was the only one I caught being used repeatedly. "Airplane carrier" for "aircraft carrier" and "pediatric shoes" for "orthopedic shoes" have stuck with me. I wondered if the author chose to do this to show that the narrator didn't have quite the mastery of English he thought he did.

Alright, I've read about 2/3s of this one, though I'm starting to reach TOB fatigue hardcore.

I'm bouncing around between 3 and 4 stars, though I'll wait for the end to finalize. It's well written. I enjoy the more philosophical elements and there is enough of a plot to keep me engaged. I listened to this one via audiobook, which turned out to be perfect for my daily drive to work, so highly recommend if any one is looking for one.

The references to women are really interesting. On one hand, you have the almost worship of the motherly sacrifice, from the painting of the mother's name on a tombstone at a movie set and the almost worship of the site during the explosion, to the frequent lady finger memory references as a gift of innocence and childhood. Then you have the younger and more independent women: the affair that won't lead to a relationship in an apartment filled with books on women that the narrator has never read; the well-thought out pick up of the singer and the shock at her accepting a cigarette, even though it isn't "lady-like".

Drew wrote: "I wondered if the author chose to do this to show that the narrator didn't have quite the mastery of English he thought he did..."

If so, that would be epic genius. I actually really hope that's the explanation -- off to scour author interviews!

Having moved to Puerto Rico a few months ago, I constantly find myself using just a *slightly* wrong word when my enthusiasm outpaces my skill level. The worst -- the absolute worst -- was when I accidentally said "Estoy excitada!" when I meant to say "I'm excited!" Technically, "excitada" does mean excited... just, you know, *that* kind of excited, which was not at all what I wanted to say in front of work colleagues.

Mainon wrote: "Drew wrote: "I wondered if the author chose to do this to show that the narrator didn't have quite the mastery of English he thought he did..."

If so, that would be epic genius. I actually really ..."

I'm hoping for epic genius rather than sloppy editing.

Finally reading and loving this!

I'm only about a quarter of the way through this one, but I'm grateful for the humor so far. The circumstances of the story are so horrific that it would be unbearable told in a more straightforward way.

Tiffany wrote: "I've read four of the tournament books so far, and of those, this is the one I think is the most likely to go to the finals. I agree with the pacing issues, but I thought for a philosophical novel ..."

So, it didn't make the finals of the ToB, but it did win the Pulitzer. I'll take that as a consolation victory.

You put a big smile on my face Tiffany!!

So happy about this!