The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)

I was surprised when The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, because I had seldom seen it mentioned as a potential winner. I am even more surprised now that I have read it. While it is written from a unique viewpoint and is interesting and intriguing, at least most of the time, still it has some definite shortcomings that one would think would disqualify it for the prestigious prize as the best fiction of 2015. When I finished it, I did not think, "Wow." Instead I thought, "It's a good book, but...."

The first-person unnamed narrator is a half-Vietnamese, half-French Captain in the South Vietnamese army, according to his own testimony "a man of two minds," able to "see any issue from both sides." As Saigon is falling, he and his General and others of their fellow fighters are air lifted to the U.S. to avoid capture by the Communists. Unbeknownst to his fellow solders, he is a spook, a spy, a secret Communist informant, charged with reporting on any activities of his exiled countrymen which might prove threatening for the victorious regime.

Throughout the ensuing story of his years in the U.S. and his return to his native country, the narrator reveals his two minds in a variety of ways. He despises the Americans for their paternalistic takeover of the South Vietnamese cause only to abandon the country to its own devices. He admires Americans for the boundless optimism which their society promotes. His political loyalties clash with his loyalties to friends. He believes in the Communist cause, which proclaims independence and freedom for the masses. He sees that in practice those liberated from capitalistic imperialism have less independence and freedom than before.

Some parts of this novel are genius. The narrator's stint as a consultant on a big budget Hollywood movie about the Vietnamese War (obviously modeled on Apocalypse Now) is black comedy at its best. The narrator's "re-education" by his Communist comrades is a visceral and chilling depiction of modern torture methods.

This brings me to the shortcomings. Some parts are jarringly overwritten, with oh-so-clever metaphors which break the concentration on the narrative. But that is a minor annoyance. My main problem with the book is that the tone is off. As I have indicated, some portions are satiric black comedy; some are definitely not comedic in the least. It has been my observation that successful black comedy about essentially brutal and violent acts must be consistent and exuberant and over-the-top, as in Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five. This one changes in tone from one incident to another, and that is disconcerting, to say the least.

Perhaps the value of a look at history from a differing viewpoint and its lessons for today outweigh any strictly literary qualms. Perhaps this novel is the rightful Pulitzer winner. However, I would have voted for The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra.