The sequel to The Sympathizer, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in
Fiction and went on to sell over a million copies worldwide, The
Committed tells the story of "the man of two minds" as he comes as a
refugee to France and turns his hand to capitalism.
The long-awaited new novel from one of America's most highly regarded
contemporary writers, The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as
he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. The
pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in
capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.
Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend,
Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer
finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group
of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his
French Vietnamese "aunt," he finds stimulation for his mind but also
customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making
has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction,
the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the
seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose
worldviews put them in absolute opposition. The Sympathizer will need
all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to
prevail.
Both literary thriller and novel of ideas, The Committed is a
blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet
Thanh Nguyen's position in the firmament of American letters.
