The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 debut novel, The Sympathizer (Grove Atlantic), told the story of a half-French half-Vietnamese double agent who defects to the United States following the fall of Saigon in 1975 at the end of the US-Vietnam War.
Although the first quarter of the novel touches on the war, its relative failure, and American soldiers returning home to a sense of displacement, the arresting aspect of The Sympathizer is that it is told from the perspective of an Asian – albeit one who is somewhat sympathetic to both the Vietcong and American troops, one who is loyal to America but who is also disgusted by American behaviour abroad, one who is taken by the warmth of the Vietnamese but is acutely aware of their cunning.
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