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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen - 5* - My Review

The Sympathizer is an outstanding novel about the Vietnam/American War and its aftermath, starting with an exceptionally vivid scene of the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. It works on multiple levels by providing a compelling storyline and social commentary on war, identity, and cultural representation. I am impressed by the complexity of this book. It does not provide any easy-to-spot heroes and villains. Everyone becomes complicit – each is both victim and victimizer. The novel's unnamed protagonist is a North Vietnamese serving as an aid to a South Vietnamese General. The structure takes the form of a confession written by the protagonist, which creates dramatic irony as readers gradually understand the narrator's true circumstances.

He lives in what he calls “two minds.” As a mixed-race individual and a double agent, he has divided loyalties. He wants to protect his friends, even if they are serving the opposing side. He serves the Communist cause while maintaining genuine friendships with South Vietnamese officers. He criticizes American imperialism while appreciating American culture and freedoms. I think the novel excels at portraying the relationship between memory and history. The narrator's confession reveals how personal memory can be both unreliable and politically constructed. His recollections of wartime events are filtered through layers of guilt, loyalty conflicts, and survival instincts. His voice is truly distinctive.

One of the highlights is its critique of American films about the Vietnam War, most notably through the narrator's work as a consultant on a Hollywood film (clearly modeled on "Apocalypse Now.") These sections reveal how American films perpetuate stereotypes and confine the Vietnamese to serving as background figures in their own historical narrative. Before embarking on this novel, the reader should be aware that it contains a significant amount of difficult content, especially torture (view spoiler)[and rape (hide spoiler)]. I am not one that usually can handle much of this type of subject matter, but here it serves an important purpose and is not gratuitously inserted for entertainment, shock value, or because it is “required” these days (some of my pet peeves). In addition, Nguyen employs dark humor that provides relief in between intense scenes. It is an impressive debut, and I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I consider it a “modern classic.”

“What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?”

I loved this book as well - and agree that the torture scenes were really rough.

HBO adapted this book into a mini-series, which I also really enjoyed.

Hoa Xuande plays the Captain and he's a wonderful actor. And Robert Downey Jr plays ALL of the key non-Vietnamese roles: CIA agent, French priest, the Congressman, the Hollywood producer and the professor. It added an interesting element to the story, including a scene where he plays several of the characters at once.

The mini-series really emphasized some of the funnier aspects of the novel - right up until the last episode where everything comes crashing down. It was laugh, laugh, laugh, oh crap!

I read the novel without doing any prior research, and I gave it a high rating but, to be honest, there were a lot of things about the story that didn't work out very well for me. I thought it was very well researched, but overwritten and too long by at least a couple of hundred pages. I didn't learn much about the North Vietnamese from this book, apart from the obvious talking points of the southern exiles and the anti-communist propaganda expected from a novel published in the US.
The best chapters for me were the middle section describing the making of a war movie where the protagonist is hired as a consultant.