The Sympathizer
Details
Literary spy fiction and a 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner! Obviously inspired loosely by the life of a very real North Vietnamese sleeper agent, Pham Xuan An.
(There is an HBO adaptation of this. You are welcome to watch that in addition but I’m not sure whether I will. Book is supposed to be significantly better. I want to be quite choosy about the movies/TV we discuss as I am not a real movie/TV person.)
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
371 pp.
Summary:
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.