This impressive debut contains a Whitman-like multiplicity ... A bold, artful and globally minded reimagining of the Vietnam war ... The Sympathizer is an excellent literary novel, and one that ends, with unsettling present-day resonance, in a refugee boat where opposing ideas about intentions, actions and their consequences take stark and resilient human form.
Guardian, Randy Boyagoda
A ... Read morefierce novel written in a refreshingly high style and charged with intelligent rage.
Financial Times
Beautifully written and meaty
Claire Messud
Not only does Viet Thanh Nguyen bring a rare and authentic voice to the body of American literature generated by the Vietnam War, he has created a book that transcends history and politics and nationality and speaks to the enduring theme of literature: the universal quest for self, for identity. The Sympathizer is a stellar debut by a writer of depth and skill
Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
[A] dark and exciting debut novel ... Black humour seeps through these pages
Wall Street Journal
Magisterial. A disturbing, fascinating and darkly comic take on the fall of Saigon and its aftermath, and a powerful examination of guilt and betrayal. The Sympathizer is destined to become a classic and redefine the way we think about the Vietnam War and what it means to win and to lose
T.C. Boyle, author of The Tortilla Curtain
Read this novel with care; it is easy to read, wry, ironic, wise, and captivating, but it could change not only your outlook on the Vietnam War, but your outlook on what you believe about politics and ideology in general. It does what the best of literature does, expands your consciousness beyond the limitations of your body and individual circumstances
Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War
Arresting . . . One of the best pieces of fiction about the Vietnam war-and by a Vietnamese. . . . Stunning . . . Could it be that Nguyen has captured the shape of the devolution of war itself, from grand ambition to human ruin? . . . One of the finest novels of the Vietnam War published in recent years
Daily Beast
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
An early frontrunner for debut novel of the year
Flavorwire (10 Must-Read Books for April)
An important new perspective on the Vietnam War . . . The Sympathizer will both startle and grip you
BuzzFeed
The Sympathizer reads as part literary historical fiction, part espionage thriller and part satire. Nguyen knows of what he writes
Los Angeles Times
The satire is delicious
New Yorker
This debut is a page-turner (read: everybody will finish) that makes you reconsider the Vietnam War ... Nguyen's darkly comic novel offers a point of view about American culture that we've rarely seen
Oprah.com (Oprah's Book Club Suggestions)
Extraordinary ... Surely a new classic of war fiction ... [Nguyen] has written a cerebral thriller around a desperate expat story that confronts the existential dilemmas of our age ... 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
[A] remarkable debut novel ... His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless ... An absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet
New York Times Book Review
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