![]() ![]() Nguyen is a perceptive, scathing, and genuinely funny writer, qualities which suffused The Sympathizer and are somewhat more unevenly on display here. If you thought the US was a warmongering, racist hypocrite of epic proportions, just wait until you hear about France! With The Committed, the captain now sets his sights on the contradictions of another colonial empire. ![]() A refugee several times over, he’s fleeing both Vietnam, where he was brutally tortured by his own allies in a reeducation camp, and the United States, which has rejected him in its own fashion. This is the reality that the memorable unnamed narrator of The Sympathizer steps into at the start of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new novel. Meanwhile, France’s former colonial subjects are existing in a state of perpetual subalternity, destined to prepare the takeout food and deliver the drugs of their white counterparts. Mitterrand is president the welfare state is being expanded. PARIS IN THE EARLY 1980s: ’68 is in the rear-view and the soixante-huitards are running the show. ![]()
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