The Sympathizer
The philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson�s �consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds� informs the composition of Viet Thanh
Nguyen profoundly instructive novel, which refuses to operate as purely literary or historical fiction, but it must turn into
a spy thriller, a political satire, a black comedy of ideas on history, war, race. Jailed by those he has served as a communist
sleeper agent in America, the narrator confesses �in a style of his own choosing� what transpired over the course of the fall
of Saigon and his relocation to America. This nameless everyman, half-French and half-Vietnamese, whose secret mission to learn
�American ways of thinking� first led him to Emerson, employs Emersonian tricks and confesses in an aphoristic, contradictory,
capacious fashion, exhaustively cataloguing Vietnamese experience after decades of war and foreign manipulation: �(T)he parade
of paupers� outside the Saigon cafes along with �military amputees ... elderly beggars ... street urchins ... young widows and
cripples�; the desperate radio chatter as Saigon collapses; the humbling jobs that befall those Vietnamese who reach America
and the violent deaths some meet while in exile. There is no safe haven. Nothing is ever purely what it seems, and �the best
kind of truth mean(s) at least two things.�
Absurdities abound and never more so than when the narrator serves as a technical consultant to the movie about the Vietnam War.
Made in the Philippines with Asian everymen-- Vietnamese extras are only employed for background chatter and acting dead. What
they say is unimportant but it must sound real. �Dead Vietnamese, take your places!� And so they do: They rise again in this
furiously composed novel and demand we reconsider Vietnam and its people �skunked by history.� This necessary fiction, this
Emerson-infused enthusiastic work has Whitman�s breadth. The great poet�s wide embrace of all things American is doubled in this
powerful American Vietnam War novel with its wide embrace of all things Vietnamese.
� Christine Schutt
2016 finalist judge
DLPP 2016 Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen Recognized as MacArthur Fellow
Viet Thanh Nguyen, the 2016 winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction for his debut novel The
Sympathizer has been named one of 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellows. The Foundation awards unrestricted
fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative
pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.
Learn more.
|
|
|
2016 Fiction Winner
(Click photo to see acceptance speech at awards dinner.)
Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer
�As a realist, I don�t believe in peace. As an idealist, I have to believe in it. We live in bloody
and fearful times, but I think back to how, only a few millenia before, our human imagination was
once limited to our tribe. Realism meant seeing the world only as far as the horizon. Now we can
see further, and our imagination extends far beyond the horizon. Perhaps writers have something to
do with that expansion of the imagination, which has occurred while we as a species have collectively
groped towards the end of war, conflict, violence, and abuse. The role of writers in these half-blind
efforts is twofold. We can portray the worst of what human beings do to each other, and in so doing
we can remind readers, and ourselves, that inhumanity is a part of humanity. In the face of that cruel
truth, we can also imagine the best that humanity is capable of, and in that way provide a vision, a
way to overcome the momentum of past conflicts and inherited bitterness, the inertia of accepting our
brutality. A strong dose of unsentimental realism, mixed with a touch of wild idealism�that is one
way to imagine what I attempted to do through The Sympathizer. I am honored by this prize, which
recognizes that in writing about war, I was also hoping for peace.�
� Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. His debut novel, The Sympathizer is a
New York Times best seller and has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Edgar Award
for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from
the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction
from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American
Librarian Association. He is the author of two non-fiction titles, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of
War and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He has also co-edited with Janet
Hoskins, a new anthology on Transpacific Studies, a rising academic field that explores connections across and through
the Pacific. He teaches English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and
currently resides in Los Angeles. His next book is a short story collection, forthcoming in February 2017 from Grove
Press.
Community Conversations - The Sympathizer
On October 2, 2017, Wright State University Professor Andrew Strombeck and Dayton City Commissioner
Matt Joseph spoke with Author Viet Thanh Nguyen about his novel The Sympathizer. This is part
of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Community Conversations Series.
Watch the video.
|
|
