The Sympathizer

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
Shortlisted for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
The Sympathizer is a Vietnam War novel unlike any other. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, it explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.
An absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet' New York Times Book Review
'Extraordinary ... Surely a new classic of war fiction ... I haven't read anything since Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that illustrates so palpably how a patient tyrant, unmoored from all human constraint, can reduce a man's mind to liquid' Washington Post
'An important new perspective on the Vietnam War . . . The Sympathizer will both startle and grip you' BuzzFeed
'I cannot remember the last time I read a novel whose protagonist I liked so much. Smart, funny, and self-critical, with a keen sense of when to let a story speak for itself ... [Nguyen] proves a gifted and bold satirist' Barnes & Noble Review

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of the short story collection The Refugees and the novel The Sympathizer. The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.