*** WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016 *** WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST
FIRST NOVEL 2016 WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION 2016 'A fierce
novel written in a refreshingly high style and charged with intelligent rage' Financial Times
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. 'A bold artful and
globally minded reimagining of the Vietnam war . . . The Sympathizer is an excellent literary
novel and one that ends with unsettling present-day resonance in a refugee boat where
opposing ideas about intentions actions and their consequences take stark and resilient human
form' the Guardian 'Beautifully written and meaty' Claire Messud '[A] remarkable debut
novel . . . In its final chapters The Sympathizer becomes an absurdist tour de force that
might have been written by a Kafka or Genet' New York Times 'This debut is a page-turner
(read: everybody will finish) that makes you reconsider the Vietnam War ... Nguyen's darkly
comic novel offers a point of view about American culture that we've rarely seen' Oprah.com
(Oprah's Book Club Suggestions)
