The Sympathizer
Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.
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What you might want to know about The Sympathizer
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The unnamed narrator is a half-French half-Vietnamese captain on a South Vietnamese general's staff and a Communist mole.
Yes. The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut novel. He has continued the protagonist's story in The Committed (2021).
Yes. HBO released a seven-episode adaptation of The Sympathizer in 2024, with Park Chan-wook as showrunner. Robert Downey Jr. plays multiple roles.
The Sympathizer was written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, published in 2015 by Corsair.
The Sympathizer is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Sympathizer takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Sympathizer is a standalone novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, not part of a series.
The Sympathizer is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
