Viet Thanh Nguen: The Sympathizer
My novel of the year up to now. Well, and it also won the 2016 Pullitzer Price for Fiction.
The story is told from the perspective of a captain in the South Vietnamese Army, an intelligence officer who has in fact been spying for the Vietkong for years. Being evacuated from Saigon during the chaotic last weeks of the Republic of Vietnam, the young captain finds himself in the Vietnamese exile community in Los Angeles. He stays part of the entourage of his old general, who is planning to start an insurgency in the now communist Vietnam. In order to protect his cover as a communist spy, the young captain gets implicated in the murder of two exile Vietnamese suspected to be Vietcong sympathizers, acts as a consultant on an American movie on the Vietnam war, and ultimately participates in an ill-fated military incursion into Vietnam which (somehow ironically) brings him into a communist re-education camp.
Nguen does a really great job of describing his various historical settings, be it the chaos of Saigon in April 1975 or the Asian community in Los Angeles. The major reason to like the book, however, is its central theme: alienation and ironic distance.The young army captain remains continuously aware of his mixed Vietnamese- French descent, which already makes him an outsider in his own country. He maintains a detached attitude during his time in the United States, continuously observing his environment with profound sarcasm, but without getting absorbed or integrated into it. The non-committal affair he begins with an American-Japanese university clerk nicely exemplifies this, as do the two murders the young army captain, who had never killed somebody during the war, gets involved in. The entire story is told with a dark sense of humor, which nicely plays together with the setting of war, espionage and murder.
Random movie association:
Obviously something related to Apocalypse Now...
Favorite quotes:
"In short, I was in a familiar place, the place of feeling unfamiliar, which I responded to in my usual fashion by arming myself with a gin and tonic."
"And let's get one thing straight, playboy. If we get involved, and that's a big if, there are no strings attached. You do not fall in love with me and I do not fall in love with you"
Favorite music reference:
Bang bang, je ne l'oublierai pas (the French version of Nancy Sinatra's song). Sung by the general's daughter at a show for the Vietnamese exile community in Los Angeles.
My novel of the year up to now. Well, and it also won the 2016 Pullitzer Price for Fiction.
The story is told from the perspective of a captain in the South Vietnamese Army, an intelligence officer who has in fact been spying for the Vietkong for years. Being evacuated from Saigon during the chaotic last weeks of the Republic of Vietnam, the young captain finds himself in the Vietnamese exile community in Los Angeles. He stays part of the entourage of his old general, who is planning to start an insurgency in the now communist Vietnam. In order to protect his cover as a communist spy, the young captain gets implicated in the murder of two exile Vietnamese suspected to be Vietcong sympathizers, acts as a consultant on an American movie on the Vietnam war, and ultimately participates in an ill-fated military incursion into Vietnam which (somehow ironically) brings him into a communist re-education camp.
Nguen does a really great job of describing his various historical settings, be it the chaos of Saigon in April 1975 or the Asian community in Los Angeles. The major reason to like the book, however, is its central theme: alienation and ironic distance.The young army captain remains continuously aware of his mixed Vietnamese- French descent, which already makes him an outsider in his own country. He maintains a detached attitude during his time in the United States, continuously observing his environment with profound sarcasm, but without getting absorbed or integrated into it. The non-committal affair he begins with an American-Japanese university clerk nicely exemplifies this, as do the two murders the young army captain, who had never killed somebody during the war, gets involved in. The entire story is told with a dark sense of humor, which nicely plays together with the setting of war, espionage and murder.
Random movie association:
Obviously something related to Apocalypse Now...
Favorite quotes:
"In short, I was in a familiar place, the place of feeling unfamiliar, which I responded to in my usual fashion by arming myself with a gin and tonic."
"And let's get one thing straight, playboy. If we get involved, and that's a big if, there are no strings attached. You do not fall in love with me and I do not fall in love with you"
Favorite music reference:
Bang bang, je ne l'oublierai pas (the French version of Nancy Sinatra's song). Sung by the general's daughter at a show for the Vietnamese exile community in Los Angeles.
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