The Sympathizer

by Viet Thanh Nguyen Book 1 in the The Sympathizer series.

First published 2015

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4.1(27,736)

Saigon, April 1975. As South Vietnam collapses, an army captain helps his general choose officers and families for evacuation to the United States. The captain is also a Communist mole, educated in America and secretly reporting on the defeated South Vietnamese community to his handler. In Los Angeles he lives among refugees rebuilding their lives while continuing to serve a revolution from which he is increasingly divided.

His double existence draws him into plans for a counterrevolutionary return to Vietnam, an American war film being made in the Philippines and finally a mission that forces him to confront the human cost of divided loyalties. The novel uses the machinery of a spy thriller to examine ideology, memory, colonialism and exile, while challenging the familiar American narratives through which the Vietnam War has often been remembered.