
The Sympathizer
The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.
- Publisher
- Hachette UK
- ISBN-13
- 9781472151384
- Topics
- Vietnam War and its legacyEspionage and double identityImmigration and displacementPolitical ideology and extremismCultural duality and belonging
Awards
- Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionWon(2016)
- Pulitzer Prize for FictionWonMajor(2016)
- International Dublin Literary AwardShortlistedMajor(2017)
- PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionShortlistedMajor(2016)
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/ThrillerShortlisted(2015)
Other awarded books from Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen has no other awarded or shortlisted books yet.
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