The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
“A Communist spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army confesses everything — but to whom, and why, you won't know until the end.”
EraContemporary
Pages371
Difficulty★★★☆☆ Challenging
AP Appearances3
Character Analysis
Never named — his namelessness is thematic, not an oversight. A name would fix him to one side. He is 'a man of two minds,' born to a French priest and a Vietnamese peasant woman, educated in an American-run school, recruited by the Communists, embedded in the South Vietnamese military. He has been everything to everyone and belongs nowhere. The reeducation camp is a machine designed to cure him of this condition, and the novel ends with the question of whether it succeeded.