Reading Order
The SympathizerThe Sympathizer Series Reading Order
Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer (2015) is the first book in a duology, followed by The Committed (2021). The Sympathizer follows an unnamed narrator — a communist spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army as a captain and aide-de-camp — through the fall of Saigon in 1975 and his subsequent life as a refugee in Los Angeles. The novel is structured as a forced confession. The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016 and was adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2024.
Where to start
The Sympathizer
Complete The Sympathizer Book List
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The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen·2015·A communist spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army narrates the fall of Saigon and his refugee life in Los Angeles as a forced confession; Pulitzer Prize winner 2016 - 2Buy
The Committed
Viet Thanh Nguyen·2021·Sequel — the narrator arrives in France as a refugee and becomes entangled in the Parisian drug trade; requires reading The Sympathizer first
The Sympathizer — Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read The Sympathizer before The Committed?
Yes — The Committed begins directly after The Sympathizer ends and requires having read the first book. The narrator's identity, his history, and the events that drove him to France are all assumed knowledge. Start with The Sympathizer.
Is The Sympathizer about the Vietnam War?
The Sympathizer is about the end of the Vietnam War — specifically the fall of Saigon in April 1975 and what followed for South Vietnamese people who fled as refugees. The novel is interested in the war from the perspective of someone who was on both sides simultaneously, and is critical of American representations of the war, including films like Apocalypse Now (which the narrator works on as a cultural consultant).
What does 'The Sympathizer' mean as a title?
The narrator is a 'sympathizer' in the communist/political sense — he is a covert communist operative sympathetic to the revolutionary cause — but also in the human sense: he has the capacity to understand and feel multiple perspectives simultaneously. He describes himself as a 'spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.' The ability to see from more than one side is both his survival skill and his existential burden.
Is The Sympathizer appropriate for all readers?
The Sympathizer contains graphic torture scenes in its first and final acts, graphic sexual content, and extensive political violence. The novel is formally and intellectually demanding — Nguyen is in conversation with Frantz Fanon, Graham Greene, and the tradition of literary anti-colonialism, and the novel rewards readers who engage with these references. It is adult literary fiction.
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