The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Entry Date: 2025-08-07
Progress: 25%
A quarter of the way through, The Sympathiser feels quite different from other Anglosphere literature about the Vietnam War. Author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Vietnamese background brings an authenticity and perspective I haven’t encountered before. Unsurprising given that, when he was still a young child, Nguyen’s family fled to America after the fall of Saigon—this historical event now the setting of his novel.
The narrator’s voice is the book’s most striking feature: sardonic, intelligent, but deeply critical of both American intervention and religion to the point it permeates his almost every thought. His observations about American contradictions are sharp. He notes that America is “a democracy destroying another country in order to save it”, and questions whether his need for American charity stems from first receiving American “aid.”Â
What’s interesting is how the narrator’s smugness reveals his own blind spots. He’s quick to spot hypocrisy in others while missing his own moral compromises and contradiction. His voice arrogant and youthful, as though he thinks himself the only one in the room who gets the joke, delivers the conviction of anyone with an ideology. I anticipate some humbling moments ahead.
Despite the narrator’s clear political and ideological leanings, I get the feeling that Nguyen seems to maintain authorial neutrality. Every critique of each side feels balanced with the natural consequences of being aligned with something (I guess this is an abstract way of saying nothing seems particularly romanticised). I can sense the author’s personal frustrations—his struggle with Vietnamese voices being historically silenced and his complex relationship with his family’s Catholicism—bleeding through without overwhelming the story. The narrator’s ideology feels authentic to his character, rather than simply a mouthpiece for the author’s views.
I’m still deciding if I enjoy it; I usually can’t tell until I get through about 40% of a book. It’s certainly engaging so far, though the smugness occasionally grates me (if only it reminds me of a younger, more self-righteous me). Some passages make me genuinely uncomfortable, though I gather it’s intentional. The blasphemous and shameless moments seem designed to provoke, and I’m curious whether this discomfort will evolve as the character does (or doesn’t).
Entry Date: 2025-08-09
Progress: 39%
Slowly, subtly, the narrative has been transmuting, from darkly funny to funnily dark. The narrator’s frustration and disillusionment bleed through the pages, evolving my gradual irritation with his smugness into sympathy for a child humbled by reality. His worldview dismantled, piece by piece. Smile fading to grimace.
The author plays with the motif of identity delicately, allowing me (someone far removed from the 1970s refugee diaspora of Vietnam) to find company in the universality of being a black sheep.
At first, I’d read to get sleepy, but I’ve become genuinely interested in the book so it now keeps me alert. In particularly, there are two poignant scenes which catalyse change in the protagonist—one brutal and one absurd—and push him into directions he naively did not expect. I’m curious to see how far he follows.