The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary, analysis and review of the book and not the original book.

Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (and six other awards) with this 2016 book, The Sympathizer. It is a harrowing and masterful tale of identity, culture, and the balance between good and evil. Nguyen's book combines both the pace and suspense of a suspense-thriller with a literary prowess reserved for the greats.

This FastReads Summary & Analysis offers supplementary material to The Sympathizer to help you distill the key takeaways, review the book's content, and further understand the writing style and overall themes from an editorial perspective. Whether you'd like to deepen your understanding, refresh your memory, or simply decide whether or not this book is for you, FastReads Summary & Analysis is here to help. Absorb everything you need to know in under 20 minutes!

What does this FastReads Summary Include?

Executive summary of the original book Chapter-by-chapter synopses Key Takeaways from each chapter Editorial Review
Original Book Summary Overview
The narrator, a 'man with two minds' is a half-French, half-Vietnamese bastard child who feels out of place in both cultures, and fittingly works as a communist double agent during the Vietnam War. His world upends after the Fall of Saigon sends him to live in America with other war refugees, though he continues reporting back to his Communist leaders still in Vietnam. Split between these two worlds, the narrator finds himself confronted with atrocities and forced to combat the darkest, most repressed memories in his own psyche in order to find the healing process for cleaving himself back together. In an style of writing both explosive and deep, author Viet Thanh Ngyen brings the harsh reality of the Vietnam War to an international audience, putting a distinctively Southeast Asian lens on a conflict that is often only understood from the perspective of the Western aggressors.

BEFORE YOU BUY: The purpose of this FastReads Summary is to help you decide if it's worth the time, money and effort reading the original book (if you haven't already). FastReads has pulled out the essence-but only to help you ascertain the value of the book for yourself. This analysis is meant as a supplement to, and not a replacement for, The Sympathizer.