The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, 1)

An Amazon Best Book of April 2015: Viet Thanh Nguyen s The Sympathizer brilliantly draws you in with the opening line: I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. It s thrilling, rhythmic, and astonishing, as is the rest of Nguyen s enthralling portrayal of the Vietnam War. The narrator is an undercover communist agent posing as a captain in the Southern Vietnamese Army. Set during the fall of Saigon and the years after in America, the captain spies on the general and the men he escaped with, sharing his information with his communist blood brothers in coded letters. But when his allegiance is called into question, he must act in a way that will haunt him forever. Political, historical, romantic and comic, The Sympathizer is a rich and hugely gratifying story that captures the complexity of the war and what it means to be of two minds. --Al Woodworth