Review: THE SYMPATHIZER by Viet Thanh Nguyen

A Vietnamese double agent straddles racial, cultural, and ideological binaries as he moves between falling Saigon and California. Viet Thanh Nguyen takes an unflinching look at the failings of Vietnamese and American society.

The Sympathizer is written from the first-person perspective of a Communist Vietnamese double agent, writing a confession for a Communist commandant. The novel follows the (unnamed) narrator’s life from Saigon to America and back. After making a childhood pact with his two best friends, the war tests the narrator when him and his friend Man become Communist agents, while their other friend Bon fights for the South. When Saigon falls, the narrator becomes a Communist spy embedded in the Vietnamese American refugee community.