The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
war political literary fiction betrayal philosophical

Our Take

A communist spy inside the South Vietnamese exile community confessing to a commissar he cannot satisfy. Nguyen writes the Vietnam War from the side American literature forgot, and makes the spy's split loyalty a philosophical condition. Funny, furious, and finally unbearable.

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