The Sympathizer Book Discussion

Book Summary

Join us as we examine Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer. The Sympathizer is the story of a captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

About the Author

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, University Professor at the University of Southern California, and a MacArthur genius fellow. Viet came to the United States in 1975 as a war refugee. He is the author of bestsellers The Sympathizer, The Refugees, and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and he serves as critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times Book Review compares his work “favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene, and le Carré.”

This program is part of the 2022 NEA Big Read, which encourages the Pennington community to read the same book and participate in a wide variety of events. The Best We Could Do is an intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Please visit PenningtonLibrary.org/2022BigRead for a full calendar of events and more information.

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.