THE SYMPATHIZER
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Winner of the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal for First Fiction
Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award (Thriller/Mystery)
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award
Finalist for the PEN/Bingham Award
Finalist for the ABA Indies Choice Award
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The Daily Beast, Kansas City Star, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Guardian, National Post, MPR News, Amazon, Slate, Flavorwire, Entropy, Quartz, and Globe and Mail
“[A] remarkable debut novel . . . [Nguyen] brings a distinctive 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 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. . . . Both thriller and social satire. . . . In its final chapters, The Sympathizer becomes an absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet.” —Philip Caputo, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“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 . . . 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 . . . 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.” —Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
“Trapped in endless civil war, ‘the man who has two minds’ tortures and is tortured as he tries to meld the halves of his country and of himself. Viet Thanh Nguyen accomplishes this integration in a magnificent feat of storytelling. The Sympathizer is a novel of literary, historical, and political importance.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Fifth Book of Peace
“Simultaneously cynical and ardent . . . hypnotic.” —Globe and Mail
“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.” —Dawn Raffel, Oprah.com (Oprah’s Book Club Suggestions)
“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. . . . [He] sets out to tell a compassionate story from the point of view of a person who, even though he took a side, could see the point of view of the other side.” —Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times
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“[A] dark and exciting debut novel . . . [The narrator’s] mordant confessions deal little with the war itself. 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 . . . The section of The Sympathizer that will occasion the most talk is a digressive yet brilliant parody of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. . . . Excoriating ironies abound. . . . Black humor seeps through these pages.” —Wall Street Journal
“This impressive debut contains a Whitman-like multiplicity . . . A bold, artful and globally minded reimagining of the Vietnam War and its interwoven private and public legacies . . . [a] hot and sprawling story . . . An excellent literary novel.” —Randy Boyagoda, Guardian
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“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
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