Has you thinking. Good book. Will have to read again!

As a child of a veteran who fought in Vietnam, who died many years later of his mental wounds inflicted by the fighting of that war, I read this novel with a great deal of sympathy towards almost all of the characters. This book is the kind of novel that’s best read by students of history, because it encourages the reader to recognize that history is not a set of facts, but the perspective from which you understand those facts. I will be recommending this book to almost anyone who wishes to try to begin to comprehend a war that we are just beginning to contend with as a nation, and to anyone who wishes to understand the greater horrors of war collectively.

I had the good fortune of encountering Viet Than Nguyen during his high school years. I was the only Asian American teacher at the school during that time and the Asian American student population certainly wasn’t what it is today. I think The Sympathizer definitely provides a unique insight into the Vietnamese American experience, the Asian American experience in general, and maybe even the overall American experience. There are demons that inhabit all of our existences and Viet Than Nguyen has poetically afforded us an opportunity to confront some of them.

Beautifully written - his vocabulary is astonishingly large and diverse. Use of language increíble, and , of course, the story is told in totally new perspective. But book so unrelentingly brutal I often didn't want to pick it up. Yes, I know, "it's for me own good" to understand the story he tells, but please! Sympathize with the poor reader who can only bear so much torture, sadness, and remorse!

Riveting, Unique & Spellbinding.

A true piece of literature, and a telling portrait of a man divided, a chameleon forced to choose a color so he could live. The protagonist of this novel takes its reader to the other side of the Vietnam war, with a description of those on the other side of the bullets, of village hootches being burned, of villagers being brandished VC by other villagers,to later be shown in the media of the time and movies made since being dropped from helicopters or lying crumpled on the ground with hands still tied in a pool of blood, of the underage prostitutes in the brothels. This is the backstory behind the iconic picture of the last helicopter leaving the American embassy the failed (Flag raising of Iwo Jima) of my generation and the televised atrocities surrounding the Fall of Saigon and the Vietnam war as a whole. Yet it also tells of the pitfalls and struggles of the newly arrived war torn people's to assimilate into Western society, at times with similar contrasts to the mistrust held toward the current refugee crisis.