The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, 2015)
Set in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, this debut novel poses as a confession by the unnamed “sympathizer” of the title, an American-educated Viet Cong spy whose misadventures as a mole in the service of a Republican Army general he records for an unidentified “Commandant.” Ordered to maintain his cover at war’s end, the sympathizer follows the general and his cohort as they flee besieged Saigon for the seedy streets of Los Angeles, where he monitors the general’s efforts to rebuild, from among his fellow refugees, an army to retake the South.
