The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Committed is Viet Thanh Nguyen’s sequel to his 2015 novel The Sympathizer, which explores the ‘two minds’ of a sympathetic half-Vietnamese, half-French communist spy during the Vietnam war. 

We follow our nameless protagonist upon his arrival in Paris as a refugee, after having endured torturous re-education. Here, our narrator becomes involved with a criminal line of work, dealing drugs for a Chinese gangster as an attempt to escape his past and build a new future. 

Being of two minds, the Sympathizer finds himself both seduced and abhorred by the dominant French culture, on the one hand finding the capitalist and intellectual norm attractive, and on the other hand seeing France as a brutal colonizer, ignorant of its racial dominance and discrimination. 

As he grows increasingly plagued by his two minds, sympathizing with any and all sides of a dilemma, he becomes only more confused about who he is and what he believes – perhaps he believes only in nothing. The question he cannot seem to settle is: to what is he committed? 

This novel is full of philosophical reflections on Sartre, Voltaire, Césaire, which our protagonist uses to explore his internal conflicts, sometimes resulting in rants that last an entire page or two. This can at times feel a bit heavy, but it also works to carry the energy of desperation that the Sympathizer struggles to resolve. 

The novel comprehensively explores the contradictions of Western society, and particularly applies this in the context of refugee and immigrant experiences with discrimination and otherness. 

I found it to be a truly fascinating and complex novel and I couldn’t put it down. 

Happy reading!

Reviewed by Emma

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen