The Sympathizer Trilogy by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Title: The Sympathizer
Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Publisher: Corsair, London, 2015 (UK edition)
ISBN  978 1 472151-37-7

Summary:
Fleeing Saigon in 1975 in a C-130 that takes off under rocket fire at Tan Son Nhut, the Sympathizer accompanies the General (the head of the Saigon Special Branch), and a planeload of his sidekicks and their families all the way to Los Angeles, where they get on with the difficult job of adjusting to life as civilian refugees in a country that no longer likes being reminded about the Vietnam War. The Sympathizer has a dark secret though; in spite of his French father, his American education, his CIA patronage, and a career involving torturing VC agents, he is in fact a North Vietnamese mole, fastidiously relaying what is going on among the South Vietnamese diaspora and reporting the General's every move as he trains and equips a guerilla force to infiltrate Vietnam.  

Thoughts:
This novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 and it is a deft piece of writing. The New York Times compared it to Kafka and Genet, but neither of those men would have been capable of writing this tome, the author being a South Vietnamese who arrived in the US as a child refugee. Viet Thanh Nguyen manages to encapsulate all the contradictions of the Vietnam War and its absurd outcomes in a tale that combines elements of satire, politics, national identity and extreme violence. The text is dense and complex and will not be to all tastes. I personally found the absence of quotation remarks for reported speech off-putting and confusing in places. The interrogation scenes are gruelling and no one comes out of this story unscathed. I am interested to see what reactions it got in Vietnam. The main character is based on Phạm Xuân Ẩn, the subject of the book "A Perfect Spy" who, like the Sympathizer, spent a year in a re-education camp after the war for being far too Western in his outlook. The General, on the other hand, is based on Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, right down to his buying a liquor store in LA. It is a bold novel and, in spite of the fact this period is now entering into history, it took balls to write it.

Postscript: In March 2021, the sequel was published. "The Committed" follows the Sympathizer's flight to France and his descent into the Parisian criminal underworld. I'm looking forward to reading it.


Rating:

That does sound like an interesting read.

OTB wrote:
I personally found the absence of quotation remarks for reported speech off-putting and confusing in places.

Ugh.. that would drive me nuts.

Title: The Committed
Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Publisher: Corsair, London, 2021 (UK edition)
ISBN  978 1 472151-5251-0

Summary:
Escaping Vietnam after a year in a re-education camp that has pushed him over the brink of insanity, the Sympathizer flees on a Boat People cruise from hell and ends up in an Indonesian refugee camp. There, he applies for residency in France on the basis that his father was French and he has a Parisian "aunt" (his letter drop contact from his days as a Communist spy in Los Angeles). Finding that dealing drugs is the easiest way to make a living in a country where "liberté égalité fraternité" are highly conditional terms, Vô Danh, as he is now calling himself (= anonymous in Vietnamese) finds himself caught in an ever-increasing spiral of gang violence as he tramples on the turf of a Maghrebin crew who come looking for him after he puts two of them in hospital with his switchblade.

Thoughts:
This is the follow-up to The Sympathizer, and it packs just as big a punch as the original. I was curious to see if the author would be up to the challenge of depicting life in 1980s Paris, a world he did not know personally. He captures all of its quirks, inconsistencies and hypocrisies: sidewalks mined with dogshit that are actually filthier than Saigon's, pompous Parisian intellectuals smugly lecturing on the failure of the Vietnamese revolution even while their own newly-elected Socialist government is falling flat, the weirdness of Paris's Chinatown, the 13th Arrondissement, which is so dilutely, blandly Asian that Vô Danh thinks it must be some sort of State-engineered plot, and the consequences of France's colonial heritage in the form of inter-ethnic gangland violence. I caught the tail end of the Mitterrand years, and as someone who has lived in Paris, and was even for a short while in Paris's Chinatown, and who has encountered just the sort of intellectuals and thugs depicted here, I can say that Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a thoroughly accurate portrayal of that world. There were laugh-out-loud moments of recognition as I read his portrayal of Paris and its denizens and the climax of the novel is as breathtaking as it is violent. The ending is suspiciously open-ended, so it looks like this is going to be a trilogy, with the 3rd book involving the CIA.  


Rating:

I was curious, now I am in need...

My only disappointment is having to wait another 5 years for the next instalment.

Whooh! HBO is doing a TV series of The Sympathizer - this is going to be good:

https://saigoneer.com/film-tv/25893-hbo-adaptation-of-the-sympathizer-casts-kiều-chinh,-mc-kỳ-duyên,-sandra-oh?fbclid=IwAR

It'll be the first US TV series, and the first US Vietnam War TV series, with a predominantly Vietnamese cast.

Oooo, I hope they can do it justice and don't dumb it down.

Wow, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ's daughter has been cast as the General's wife (the character in the book based on Kỳ, right down to him buying an LA liquor store after the war...):

https://vietcetera.com/en/paris-by-night-host-casts-in-hbos-new-post-vietnam-war-drama?fbclid=IwAR11kAILToCn8N0SmyCogrh8-pzzjYfAtWcRxslcgJsaySMClxmCnS8Zdq0

And Robert Downey Jr is in the cast too:

"According to insiders, he is set to play multiple supporting roles as the main antagonists — all of whom represent a different arm of the American establishment including an up-and-coming Orange County congressman, a CIA agent and a Hollywood film director, among others."
https://deadline.com/2021/07/hbo-a24-partner-viet-thanh-nguyens-the-sympathizer-robert-downey-jr-1234793468/

This series is going to be REALLY interesting to watch.

Anyone want to bet money on whether it will be screened on TV in Vietnam?

I am really surprised that RDJ is not only in it but also a producer! I don't think of him as having an interest in this sort of socio-political sort of story.

I can't wait to see him playing the CIA officer and the film director.

We now have the first trailer for the forthcoming TV series:



"And Robert Downey Jr
And Robert Downey Jr
And Robert Downey Jr
And Robert Downey Jr"

Looking good!

This Youtube commenter nailed it:

"Kirk Lazarus takes it up to another level, playing 4 guys now
the Tropic Thunder sequel we never saw coming"

The first episode of The Sympathizer is on-line and it was great.

Here's the latest trailer:

I have just returned from three weeks in the US and watched the first episode on TV on HBO.

Very interesting first episode, can't wait to see them all now.