The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The next book is a spy thriller set against the backdrop of the US invasion of Vietnam.

"I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess."

The title character of Nguyen’s comparatively hot and sprawling story is a hyper-self-conscious intellectual defined by the divisions he has straddled from birth: the illegitimate son of a French Catholic priest and a teenage Vietnamese villager, he grows up at odds with the world around him. He emerges with a sense of this double identity as a source of both pain and power, and goes to the United States in the 1960s for a college education and introduction to all that’s barbarous and bright in American life. He returns to Vietnam to help keep all that at bay and finds himself naturally suited to espionage, which he pursues while working in the South Vietnamese army and serving as the trusted aide of a general with strong CIA connections.

A TV series based on the story is in the making
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr7hBPhXrus

We are meeting Sunday 23rd June, 3pm at Cafe Passion to discuss the book.

(it was suggested we go to the cafe "the temperance movement" in Halifax but it closes rather early at 3pm on a Sunday, so for now let's stick to Cafe Passion - if you want to suggest a different cafe, feel free)