The Sympathizer: Now a Sky Exclusive limited series - Softcover

Nguyen, Viet Thanh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472151364 ISBN 13: 9781472151360

Publisher: Corsair, 2016

Synopsis

A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, offering a unique perspective on the Vietnam war. Destined to become a modern classic

About this title

About the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

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

From the Inside Flap

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Corsair
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1472151364
• ISBN 13: 9781472151360
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384