The Sympathizer

This edition of the book club features the astounding Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a "man of two minds," whom we meet through a confession that we know to be some time after the Fall of Saigon. Our unnamed spy narrator is a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who was educated in America and returned to Vietnam during the conflict, spying on his American and army confederates. Things fall apart after the Fall of Saigon, as he tries to build a new life with other refugees in Los Angeles all the while secretly reporting back to his communist allies. We were lucky enough to be joined by three sympathizing souls to discuss the nature of identity and empathy in the aftermath of war and how conflicts of sympathy shape the lives of refugees and the new cultures they join.