The Sympathizer

At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking old burgundy and drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the helicopters that will soon abandon the city. A captain is working with the general on this list, a man who makes sure to save himself and a select group of others. When the group arrives in Los Angeles, this captain speedily writes a letter to an aunt in Paris--a woman who he has never met. She will pass the letter, with its coded descriptions of his compatriots and their efforts to continue fighting the war, to its true recipient: the captain's friend Man, a high-up within 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 received his education in life and love in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A man who is a spy and a sympathizer. A man who does not know who he really is. In this stunning and beautifully written novel of betrayal, espionage, and the legacy of the Vietnam War, Viet Thanh Nguyen explores a life between two worlds. Totally unlike the novels or films of the Vietnam War that have preceded it, and with a literary elegance and dark wit, The Sympathizer gives voice to the perspective of a conflicted subversive and idealist, examining a side of the war and its aftermath America has never seen before.