A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, offering a unique perspective on the Vietnam war. Destined to become a modern classic
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
Shortlisted for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
The Sympathizer is a Vietnam War novel unlike any other. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, it explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.
An absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet' New York Times Book Review
'Extraordinary ... Surely a new classic of war fiction ... I haven't read anything since Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably how a patient tyrant, unmoored from all human constraint, can reduce a man's mind to liquid' Washington Post
'An important new perspective on the Vietnam War . . . The Sympathizer will both startle and grip you' BuzzFeed
'I cannot remember the last time I read a novel whose protagonist I liked so much. Smart, funny, and self-critical, with a keen sense of when to let a story speak for itself ... [Nguyen] proves a gifted and bold satirist' Barnes & Noble Review
This impressive debut contains a Whitman-like multiplicity ... A bold, artful and globally minded reimagining of the Vietnam war ...
The Sympathizer is an excellent literary novel, and one that ends, with unsettling present-day resonance, in a refugee boat where opposing ideas about intentions, actions and their consequences take stark and resilient human form.
