Sympathizer (Nguyen) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The great achievement of The Sympathizer is that it gives the Vietnamese a voice and demands that we pay attention. Until now, it's been largely a one-sided conversation—or at least that's how it seems in American popular culture…[where] we've heard about the Vietnam War mostly from the point of view of American soldiers, American politicians and American journalists. We've never had a story quite like this one before…[Nguyen] has a great deal to say and a knowing, playful, deeply intelligent voice. His novel is a spy thriller, a philosophical exploration, a coming-of-age tale, the story of what it's like to be an immigrant, to be part-Asian, to be the illegitimate child of a forbidden liaison. It's about being forced to hide yourself under so many layers that you're not sure who you are…There are so many passages to admire. Mr. Nguyen is a master of the telling ironic phrase and the biting detail, and the book pulses with Catch-22-style absurdities…[Nguyen] undercuts horror with humor and then swings it back around.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times


[R]emarkable…Nguyen…brings a distinct perspective to the war and its aftermath. His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light. But this tragicomic novel reaches beyond its historical context to illuminate more universal themes: the eternal misconceptions and misunderstandings between East and West, and the moral dilemma faced by people forced to choose not between right and wrong, but right and right. The nameless protagonist-narrator, a memorable character despite his anonymity, is an Americanized Vietnamese with a divided heart and mind. Nguyen's skill in portraying this sort of ambivalent personality compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene and le Carré.
Philip Caputo - New York Times Book Review


[A] dark and exciting debut novel.... The Sympathizer starts with the fall of Saigon in 1975, depicting the corrupt jockeying for places on the departing planes. It’s a frenzied, abrasive, attention-grabbing overture.... Excoriating ironies abound.... Black humor seeps through these pages.
Wall Street Journal


Extraordinary.... Surely a new classic of war fiction.... [Nguyen] has wrapped a cerebral thriller around a desperate expat story that confronts the existential dilemmas of our age... Laced with insight on the ways nonwhite people are rendered invisible in the propaganda that passes for our pop culture.... I haven’t read anything since Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably how a patient tyrant, unmoored from all humane constraint, can reduce a man’s mind to liquid.
Washington Post


Stunned, amazed, impressed. [The Sympathizer is] so skillfully and brilliantly executed that I cannot believe this is a first novel. (I should add jealous to my emotions.) Upends our notions of the Vietnam novel.
Chicago Tribune


The Sympathizer reads as part literary historical fiction, part espionage thriller and part satire. American perceptions of Asians serve as some of the book’s most deliciously tart commentary.... Nguyen knows of what he writes.
Los Angeles Times


Sparkling and audacious.... Unique and startling.... Nguyen’s prose is often like a feverish, frenzied dream, a profuse and lively stream of images sparking off the page.... Nguyen can be wickedly funny.... [His] narrator has an incisive take on Asian-American history and what it means to be a nonwhite American...this remarkable, rollicking read by a Vietnamese immigrant heralds an exciting new voice in American literature
Seattle Times


Welcome a unique new voice to the literary chorus.... [The Sympathizer] is, among other things, a character-driven thriller, a political satire, and a biting historical account of colonization and revolution. It dazzles on all fronts.
Cleveland Plain Dealer


The novel’s best parts are painful, hilarious exposures of white tone-deafness...[the] satire is delicious.
New Yorker


A dark, funny—and Vietnamese—look at the Vietnam War.... The novel is rife with insight and criticism—and importantly...the perspective of a Vietnamese person during and after the war.
All Things Considered, NPR


This debut is a page-turner (read: everybody will finish) that makes you reconsider the Vietnam War (read: everyone will have an opinion).... Nguyen’s darkly comic novel offers a point of view about American culture that we’ve rarely seen.
Oprah.com


(Starred review.) [A]stonishing....a lively, wry first-person narrator called the Captain...[navigates] the fall of Saigon.... [As] Vietnamese exiles settle uncomfortably in an America....the Captain is forced to incriminate others.... Nguyen’s novel enlivens debate about history and human nature....poignant, often mirthful....
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Ultimately a meditation on war, political movements, America's imperialist role, the CIA, torture, loyalty, and one's personal identity, this is a powerful, thought-provoking work. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Nguyen’s cross-grained protagonist exposes the hidden costs in both countries of America’s tragic Asian misadventure. Nguyen’s probing literary art illuminates how Americans failed in their political and military attempt to remake Vietnam—but then succeeded spectacularly in shrouding their failure in Hollywood distortions. Compelling—and profoundly unsettling.
Booklist


(Starred review.) A closely written novel of after-the-war Vietnam, when all that was solid melted into air. As Graham Greene and Robert Stone have taught us, on the streets of Saigon, nothing is as it seems.... Both chilling and funny, and a worthy addition to the library of first-rate novels about the Vietnam War.
Kirkus Reviews