“I was deeply influenced by watching films like ‘A Better Tomorrow’ and ‘A Bullet in the Head,’ which is actually set in Vietnam… It’s that same sense of romantic blood brotherhood, the good guy versus bad guy who are actually mirror images of each other.”įor a writer adept at penning thrillers, it might come as a surprise that Nguyen also names as a major influence W. Part of the drama of both novels is the relationship between the narrator and his blood brothers, a communist and a killer of communists, both of whom he betrays and both of whom he loves.
Nguyen cites Shakespearean tragicomedies and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels as inspirations for “The Sympathizer” and “The Committed.” He also cites the action films of John Woo. But “The Committed” is both a seamless continuation of its predecessor - the same unsparing intellect and take-no-prisoners sardonic wit animate each page - and a stand-alone book. The sequel, he says, allowed him “to expand upon what I’ve always felt, which is that ‘The Sympathizer’ is not only a Vietnam War novel but a novel about race and colonialism.”īy all measures, “The Sympathizer” is a tough act to follow: a bestseller that drew comparisons to Ralph Ellison, John le Carre and Saul Bellow, the novel earned the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “I’m very cognizant of the fact that people read “The Sympathizer” as a Vietnam War novel and me as a Vietnamese American writing about the Vietnam War.” “I wasn’t done with his story,” says Nguyen, who joins the Los Angeles Times Book Club on March 10. In Nguyen’s sequel, “The Committed,” his narrator is “still a man of two faces and two minds.” But now he is also “a revolutionary without a revolution,” a refugee in 1980s Paris who is grappling with politics, ideologies, and himself. Both literary thriller and novel of ideas,The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen's position in the firmament of American letters.Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel “The Sympathizer” introduced readers to its unnamed protagonist, a half-Vietnamese, half-French communist double agent navigating life, love, loyalty and espionage in Los Angeles after the fall of Saigon. The Sympathizer will need all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to prevail.
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But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese "aunt," he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.
The long-awaited new novel from one of America's most highly regarded contemporary writers,The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. The sequel toThe Sympathizer, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and went on to sell over a million copies worldwide,The Committed tells the story of "the man of two minds" as he comes as a refugee to France and turns his hand to capitalism.
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