The Committed

The Sympathizer #2

by Viet Thanh Nguyen, François Chau (Narrator)

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.

This audiobook is a sequel to The Sympathizer.  

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical, Asia, Novels, France

Audio CD

First published March 2, 2021

About the author

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of “The Sympathizer,” awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His most recent book, “To Save and to Destroy,” explores the idea of being an outsider. He is also the author of the short story collection “The Refugees;” the nonfiction book “Nothing Ever Dies,” a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; the children's book “Simone” along with illustrator Minnie Phan; the sequel to “The Sympathizer,” “The Committed;” the nonfiction book “A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial,” longlisted for the National Book Award; and is the editor of an anthology of refugee writing, “The Displaced,” as well as a co-editor of “The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora.” He is a University Professor and the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the second book in a series (admittedly I have not read the first book); however, I thought that I might enjoy this book based on the description: A former Vietnamese communist spy finds himself in Paris believing in nothing and resorting to drug dealing.

This book fell flat and disconnected, soulless. It was similar to reading Nick - the main character observing without any feelings - and also the chaos and disorganization of Catch-22. Most of the time, I didn't know where the novel was heading (and not in a good way). Perhaps it was the formatting, but there were missing quotation marks so I could not always tell if someone was talking. The main character spoke about some heartbreaking events, but they were described so high level that it wasn't emotionally riveting. For example, if you read an article about how 3 million people died that isn't particularly uplifting but you go about your day. Now, you read about one girl who was found on the side of the road and you hear about her life story and that she was on her way to a dance performance, most readers have a response. This was written more like the 3 million people article.

Additionally, one of the reasons that I picked up this book is because I wanted to learn a bit more about the philosophies mentioned in this book. However, some of the events were mentioned very briefly and then moved on so I still didn't learn anything additional.

Overall, this book just wasn't for me. As mentioned earlier, if you enjoy books where the main characters is very aloof, this might be one you enjoy.

*Thanks, NetGalley, for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities

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[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars for a book that is overloaded with the tortured mind of a Vietnamese spy now in France. I decided to read this book because i had read and enjoyed 2 books previously by this author.
The steam of consciousness writing, with an emphasis on the ideas of various philosophers is at times confusing and too much information. That, plus depictions of torture, detracted from the enjoyment of the book.
On the plus side, there is some interesting commentary from the Vietnamese point of view on American society, French colonizers and present French society.
One quote, a self description: "Perhaps that was just another name for a man with two faces and two minds. If so, at least I knew who I was, and that was more than could be said for most. The dual images of myself floating in his lenses reminded me that I was not one, but two, not only me or moi but also, on occasion, we or us."
Thanks to Grove Atlantic for sending me this book through NetGalley.
#TheCommitted #NetGalley

[Orsodimondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

LA CERA MORBIDA DEI RICORDI


”Pelle nera, maschere bianche”, più volte citato.

Il romanzo in diviso in sezioni intitolate “Noi”, “Me”, “Me stesso” perché l’io narrante protagonista sente d’aver multipla personalità, d’essere uno e doppio. La metà di niente, il doppio di tutto.
Sensazione e convincimento che gli deriva dall’essere stata una spia comunista infiltrata tra reazionari vietnamiti e capitalisti occidentali finita in un campo di rieducazione comunista per il troppo entusiasmo dimostrato nel fingere di essere un alleato degli imperialisti e un sostenitore dell’America.
Noi – me, me stesso e io – non eravamo né reali né irreali, ma surreali…


Episodio citato nel romanzo: l'11 giugno 1963 il monaco buddhista vietnamita Thich Quang Đức si diede fuoco a Saigon, per protestare contro la violazione della libertà religiosa e la persecuzione dei buddhisti da parte del governo vietnamita.

Figlio di una vietnamita morta a trentaquattro anni, reietta nel suo stesso villaggio in quanto è ignoto l’uomo l’ha messa incinta, il nostro, inteso come Noi, Me e Me stesso, sa bene che il suo genitore di sesso maschile è il francese sacerdote cattolico del posto. È probabile che non sia neppure il suo unico figlio.
Ergo, è il Bastardo.
Bastardo Pazzo più avanti quando comincia comportarsi e agire sotto l’effetto della multipla personalità: oltre a essere contemporaneamente rivoluzionario e reazionario, comunista e capitalista, è vietnamita e anche francese.
Però la seconda lingua che parla fluentemente non è quella dell’uomo che lo ha generato, ma l’inglese degli americani che lo hanno ‘accolto’ dopo il viaggio da “boat people”.
Se sia valsa la pena di vivere la propria vita è un interrogativo al quale possono rispondere solo il diretto interessato e Dio. E poiché Dio non esisteva, restava solo il diretto interessato. Non invocavo un dio inesistente prima di addormentarmi, e ripetevo invece l’ultima frase di “Pelle nera, maschere bianche”: “O mio corpo, fa’ di me sempre un uomo che pone domande!”



Dopo aver demolito l’America e il suo mito (inclusi quelli artistici – indimenticabile il ritratto del regista folle che gira un film sulla guerra in Vietnam in un’isola filippina con comparse fasulle – chissà se Francis Ford l’ha letto e chissà se si è riconosciuto) nel precedente Il simpatizzante, adesso è la volta della Francia, la prima potenza coloniale che ha stuprato e depredato il Vietnam, cominciando dal nome: Indocina. Eppure, come ricorda giustamente il narratore, i Viet non sono né indiani né cinesi.



Il nostro agente, dopo essere stato addestrato sia dai servizi segreti comunisti del suo paese che dalla C.I.A. americana, approda a Parigi. Ma ora non è più un agente: il campo di rieducazione comunista, col robusto corollario di torture subite, gli ha tolto ogni volta di esserlo. A Parigi diventa gangster: spaccia hashish e, se occorre, anche polvere bianca.
Ma si scontra con rivali arabi. A colpi di interrogatori e torture.
Non è una guerra religiosa, islam contro cristianesimo: è vero che il nostr, cioè “Noi”, “Me”, “Me stesso”, è cresciuto alla luce della religione più cannibale, quella che spinge a mangiare il corpo e bere il sangue del proprio dio, ma ha fatto in tempo a redimersi e maturare un sano laicismo ateo. O ateismo laico.
È una guerra per il controllo del mercato, gangster e capitalisti sanno che è aspetto basilare del loro insuperabile desiderio di arricchimento.



Sempre più spesso indicato come l’erede di Graham Greene, Viet Thanh Nguyen si ritaglia un posto a parte. Le analogie mi sembrano limitate al mondo delle spie e a comuni luoghi in estremo oriente. Molto diverso il taglio, la voce narrante con il suo reiterato delirio, che si esprime in un lungo finale, l’ironia più tagliente.
È possibile che parte di queste cinque stelle che il romanzo si è per me meritato dipendano proprio dai luoghi, dal periodo storico, dalle spie in azione.
Ma è anche possibile che sia un romanzo dannatamente buono e maledettamente ben scritto.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a serious fan of Viet Thanh Nguyen: he is not merely a brilliant stylist and storyteller, he has an infallible moral compass. I savored every word of The Sympathizer and The Refugees, and I devoured The Committed. What makes him special is that -- rather like Colson Whitehead or Margaret Atwood or Ian McEwan -- he writes books that walk the tightrope between page turners and profoundly thoughtful books of ideas. The Committed is a perfect example of that: we have drug dealers, Paris, so much gunplay and torture. . .but also a deeply moving exploration of what it means to be an outsider and the continued legacy of the myriad wars of colonial imperialism that have marked Vietnam.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2015, a professor at the University of Southern California published his first novel called “The Sympathizer.” The story was a cerebral work of historical fiction and political satire cleverly infiltrated with cultural criticism. Although cloaked as a thriller, it didn’t fit neatly into that popular genre and could have slipped by as unnoticed as a good spy.

Except that the author, Viet Thanh Nguyen, was too startlingly brilliant to ignore. “The Sympathizer” flushed color back into those iconic photos of the fall of Saigon and recast the worn lessons of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a communist agent hiding in the United States. An instant classic, the novel aggressively engaged with the nation’s mythology and demonstrated Nguyen’s extraordinary intellectual dramatic range. “The Sympathizer” swept through the year’s literary awards, winning a Pulitzer Prize, a Carnegie Medal, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Asian/Pacific American Award, an Edgar Award and more.

Now, Nguyen returns to the scene of that triumph with an even brainier sequel called “The Committed.” “I may no longer be a spy or a sleeper, but I am most definitely a spook,” the unnamed narrator begins. “I am also still a man of two faces and two minds, one of which might perhaps yet still be. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would not miss this novel for at least two reasons: firstly because of the translation by Anastasia Zavozova, and secondly because it is a continuation of the story of the "Sympathizer" who blew up the brain at the end of 2018. In The Devotee, the story of an unnamed hero with a split consciousness continues in France. We do not know how he managed to escape from captivity, how to recover from the consequences of cruel torture. Together with their friend and blood brother Bon, they end up in Paris, where the hero has an aunt who is an editor in a publishing house of intellectual literature and a woman of radical left views, which does not prevent her from leading a life filled with bourgeois comfort.

And speaking of France, we must not forget that Vietnam was precisely a French colony and it was the French who were the object of the jealous resynthesis of a child bypassed by parental love. A more complex feeling: a mixture of resentment, hatred and love than for Americans, as one would expect, knowing the history of the American war in Vietnam. In the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, there is a wonderful metaphor for the relationship of the protectorate to the metropolis: Algeria is the eldest son of France, Vietnam is the middle one, on whom hopes are pinned to be smart, and the rest of the colonies are not worthy of attention younger children. By the way, most of the Vietnamese who decided to look for Gallic happiness decades earlier, successfully assimilated, became French from the educated middle class, about like an aunt.

However, the hero is not in those conditions, he is literally put on the brink of survival. And he is not much of a superhero who will scatter rivals where necessary, in another situation he will suppress intellectual power, in the third he will charm and achieve the desired charm. He is an unhappy, deeply traumatized physically and mentally person with brilliant English (which is not quoted in Voltaire's homeland) and clumsy school French. That is, if not completely tongue-less here, then it is close enough to give the impression of a trained monkey in the circle of aunt's intellectual friends. And, lowered by circumstances to the bottom, he does the only thing that will help him push off and come up - he starts selling drugs. Fortunately, this is not expected from the Vietnamese, this sphere is controlled by the Algerians and "blackfeet" - that's how the French called the compatriots who lost everything and returned after the collapse of the colonial system.

A postcolonial novel combined with a novel of ideas is transformed into an exciting crime thriller, because where drugs are, there is a struggle for the redistribution of spheres of influence, kidnappings, massacres, relaxation in an elite brothel owned by the Boss with the telling name "Paradise", and everything that we habitually expect from literature of this genre. In my opinion, Viet Thanh Nguyen does not manage to combine all this as organically as the touching sentimental confessional, the colonial theme and the spy novel combined in his first book. There is a significant difference between confession and preaching, the accusatory and sarcastic intonation here is closer to the second, and the ideas of French existentialist intellectuals are not that close to the mass reader - they are hardly perceived by the prepared. We should also not forget about the forty-year distance between us today and the then rulers of thoughts, who shook-shook the foundations, and so remained in the annals of academic science.

The futility and inhumanity of the embodiment of beautiful abstract ideas is revealed brilliantly in the novel, Nastya Zavozova's translation is pure reader's delight and a powerful verbal balance. I listened to the "Devotee" on Bookmate in audiobook format, and in general, reading Vadim Prokhorov leaves a pleasant impression, although, as for me, there would be less anguish and a passive voice - the book would greatly benefit.

Французский связной
Даже когда у нас есть имена, только наши соотечественники знают, что это за имена, и умеют их выговаривать.
Я не пропустила бы этого романа как минимум по двум причинам: во-первых из-за перевода Анастасии Завозовой, во-вторых потому что это продолжение истории "Сочувствующего", который взорвал мозг под занавес 2018. Напомню, тот первый роман был исповедью беженца, полукровки франко-вьетнамского происхождения, незаконнорожденного сына французского священника и его девочки служанки, которую тот сначала спас от голодной смерти, а потом обрюхатил. Мама старше героя-рассказчика лишь на 14 лет и она была единственным человеком в мире, который его любил. Талантливый умный мальчишка мечтал вырасти и дать ей ту жизнь, какой она заслуживала, но мама умерла 34-летней, когда он учился в американском колледже, а он даже не мог приехать на похороны, потому что денег на билет не было - учебный грант обеспечивал только один авиабилет в год.

В той, первой книге было много всего, пересказывать ее сейчас бессмысленно, о сюжете отмеченного Пулитцером 2016 "Сочувствующего" вы можете получить представление из Вики, хотя лучше почитайте или послушайте книгу, тем более, что читает аудиоверсию Игорь Князев, чье исполнение во-многом определило успех книги в русскоязычном пространстве. Но здесь и сейчас мы говорим о "Преданном", в котором история безымянного героя с раздвоенным сознанием продолжается во Франции. Мы не знаем, как ему удалось спастись из плена, как - оправиться от последствий жестоких пыток. Вместе с другом и кровным братом Боном они попадают в Париж, где у героя тетка - редактор в издательстве интеллектуальной литературы и женщина радикально левых взглядов, что не мешает ей вести жизнь, наполненную буржуазным комфортом.

И говоря о Франции, нельзя забывать, что Вьетнам был именно французской колонией и именно на французов обращен ревнивый ресинтемент обойденного родительской любовью ребенка. Более сложное чувство: смесь обиды, ненависти и любви, чем к американцам, как можно было бы ожидать, зная историю американской войны во Вьетнаме. В романе Вьет Тхань Нгуена есть замечательная метафора отношений протектората к метрополии: Алжир старший сын Франции, Вьетнам средний, на которого возлагаются надежды быть умным, а остальные колонии - не стоящие внимания младшие дети. К слову, большинство вьетнамцев, решившихся поискать галльского счастья десятилетиями раньше, успешно ассимилировались, стали французами из образованного среднего класса, примерно как тетка.

Однако герой не в тех условиях, он буквально поставлен на грань выживания. И он сильно не супергерой, который где надо разбросает соперников, в другой ситуации подавит интеллектуальной мощью, в третьей очарует и добьется желаемого шармом. Это несчастный, глубоко травмированный физически и психически человек с блестящим английским (который на родине Вольтера не котируется) и корявым школьным французским. То есть, если не вовсе безъязыкий здесь, то достаточно близок к тому, чтобы в кругу теткиных друзей интеллектуалов производить впечатление дрессированной мартышки. И, опущенный обстоятельствами на дно, он делает единственное, что поможет оттолкнуться и вынырнуть - начинает торговать наркотиками. Благо, от вьетнамцев подобного не ждут, эта сфера контролируется алжирцами и "черноногими" - так французы называли потерявших все и вернувшихся после крушения колониальной системы соотечественников.

Постколониальный роман, соединенный с романом идей трансформируется в захватывающий криминальный триллер, потому что где наркотики - там борьба за передел сфер влияния, похищения, кровавые расправы, релакс в принадлежащем Боссу элитном борделе с говорящим названием "Рай", и все, что мы привычно ожидаем от литературы этого жанра. На мой взгляд Вьет Тхань Нгуену не удается совместить все это так органично, как совместились в его первой книге трогательно-сентиментальная исповедальность, колониальная тема и шпионский роман. Между исповедью и проповедью существенная разница, обличительная и саркастическая интонация здесь ближе ко второй, а идеи французских интеллектуалов экзистенциалистов не то, чтобы не близки массовому читателю - они и подготовленным с трудом воспринимаются. Не стоит также забывать о сорокалетней дистанции между нами сегодняшними и тогдашними властителями дум, которые сотрясали-сотрясали основы, да так и остались в анналах академической науки.

Бесплодность и бесчеловечность воплощения прекрасных отвлеченных идей раскрыта в романе блестяще, перевод Насти Завозовой чистое читательское наслаждение и мощный словесный эквилибр. Я слушала "Преданного" на Букмейте в формате аудиокниги, и в целом чтение Вадима Прохорова оставляет приятное впечатление, хотя, как по мне, поменьше бы надрыва и страдательного залога - книга бы сильно выиграла.

#постколониальный роман, современная проза, американская литература, Вьет Тхань Нгуен, "Сочувствующий" #2, лауреат Пулитцера. беженцы, Вьетнам, Франция, выживание в большом городе. криминальная драма, роман идей, экзистенциализм-и-вот-это-вот-все, перевод Анастасии Завозовой, Букмейт, аудиокнига, читает Вадим Прохоров, CORPUS, АСТ

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves. Less than nothing, we also saw nothing as we crouched blindly in the unlit belly of our ark… Even among the unwanted there were unwanted, and at that, some of us could only laugh. The prostitutes scowled at us and said, What do you want? We, the unwanted, wanted so much. We wanted food, water, and parasols, although umbrellas could be fine. We wanted clean clothes, baths, and toilets, the squatting kind … “

I am generally not a fan of sequels, tie-ins, but since this was written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, I jumped at the opportunity to read this eARCs, in which we encounter the Sympathizer, from the Pulitzer winner book with the same name. In the Sympathizer he spent some years in the United States, following the end of the Vietnam war. In this novel, he’s a refugee in Paris, France, in the early 1980s. What a brilliant idea to have this most charismatic, intelligent, tormented, ambiguous character spend time in the country that colonised Vietnam, his father's country, a father who had never recognised him.

The Committed is a masterclass in writing, with one of the most exquisite unreliable narrators I’ve ever come across. He’s intelligent and well-read, philosophical, self-aware, self-deprecating and immensely funny. I’ve highlighted quite a few paragraphs. Our character epitomizes complexity. His views on colonialism, racism, ideology, Vietnamese people and culture, French people and culture and so many other things blew me away, yet again. Occasionally, I found myself giggling, delighting in the narrator’s observations and cheekiness.

While my enjoyment of this novel did dip here and there, the peaks were so many and so high, I have to rate this 5 stars, as it's on another level.
The Committed will definitely make it on my list of 2021 favourite reads.

I've received this eARC via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest opinion. My gratitude to Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read and review this novel.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 2 out of 5]

As with any war, the origins could be disputed. Was it their fault, whoever they were, because they had killed Sleepy? Was it my fault because I had nearly killed Beatles and Rolling Stones, who presumably belonged to the same gang as Sleepy’s killers? Was it their fault because they had attempted to rob me? Was it my fault because I had strayed out of my assigned place among the invisible Indochinese who never needed a visit from the Repressive State Apparatus, since we had learned to repress ourselves? Was it their fault because they had not sought an alliance or even just a chat with their colonized comrades? Who were they, anyway, the people with whom we were now at war? …. . I went up to the waiting room [in the Brothel] and found that the eschatological muscle, knowing it to be my last day, had prepared a loan for me: his densely underlined copies of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, as well as Césaire’s A Tempest.

Viet Thang Nyugen is a Vietnamese born American academic and Marxist whose 2015 debut novel – “The Sympathizer” won the Pulitzer prize as well as a host of other prizes and nominations. I came to it late (in 2017) – when it was Dublin Literary Prize shortlisted and at the same time as the publication of his short story collection “The Refugees”.

I have to say I preferred “The Refugees” – which was very surprising to me, as generally I much prefer novels to short story collections, but I found “The Refugees” more nuanced, revealing and intriguing, whereas whereas in "The Sympathizer" the interesting themes were swamped by the (to me) implausibly wide range of different and rather bizarre scenarios experienced by the single narrator (dramatic evacuation from Saigon just before its fall, undercover spying, assassinations of communist sympathizers in America, post-war mission into the Vietnamese borders, detailed torture scenes both as perpetrator, accomplice and victim and above all a rather bizarre intermission as a type of cultural advisor to an apocalyptic Hollywood Vietnamese war movie). I also reflected that I am perhaps of a generation (born very late 1960s) and nationality (UK) where the Vietnam war simply does not have the same cultural resonance as it seems to have for other readers.

This book is an almost direct sequel to “The Sympathizer”. After a brief (and I have to say very strong) section on the refugee boat where our narrator was left in the first novel, the remainder of the book is set in Paris. There he (and his blood brother) Bon (still fiercly anti-communist and entirely unaware of the narrator being a double-agent) join a group of Vietnamese gang members and start dealing drugs on their behalf among a group of French Marxist intellectuals.

I think it is pretty well essential to have read the first book to appreciate the second – although you do not have to re-read it as the book contains plenty of references back to the first book and the key plot elements.

The author has commented that he felt there were two key reasons for writing a sequel.

The first was that he had deliberately chosen to write the first novel in a spy/adventure genre – where series/sequels are very common – and he had genre justification for simply continuing the adventure.

The second was that “I wanted to write a dialectical novel with The Sympathizer and to write a novel deeply influenced by Marxism and Marxist theory.” and to explore ideas such as “what does [a] disillusioned former revolutionary do with himself?” and to have his narrator confront both: of the legacies of both: French colonialism (something not really examined in the first novel – which concentrated more on American imperialism); sexism – the blatant sexism and sexual abuse which accompanies wars and revolutions and in which the narrator was increasingly complicit in the first novel (his torture by his own side and own friend being largely down to his not preventing the rape of a communist spy so as to protect his undercover alibi).

The narrator indeed in this novel at one point exclaiming:

Self-criticism? I cried. I am nothing if not self-critical! My entire life is a self-criticism session between me, myself, and I! No need to raise your voice, said BFD. If you are so self-critical, said the Maoist PhD, do you see where you deviate from the masses? Why should I worry about deviating from the masses when I am also me and myself? Am I not a mass? Am I not already a collective? Do I not contain multitudes? Am I not a universe unto myself? Am I not always infinitely dialectical as I synthesize the thesis of me and the antithesis of myself?

And I think that the two motivations for the book serve as almost a perfect introduction to this novel – which is effectively a blend of violent, sex-obsessed action thriller and Marxist/colonial theory

Pretty well the entire book consists of to interspersed types of narrative:

- Gangster action (mainly drug dealing, silly nicknames, “medieval” torture, tit-for-tat killings between an Asian and Arabic gang – both of course importantly victims of French Imperialistic state-exported violence in Vietnam and Algeria, visits to spectacular brothels, and multiple profanities – many in capital letters, different type sizes or both)

- Discussions or consideration of colonial/post-colonial/Marxist/literary/philosophical theory (at least a a nodding familiarity with Adorno, Althusser, Cesaire, Fanon, Gramsci. Ho Chi Minh, Rosseau, Voltaire and so on is fairly crucial to the novel)

With just as you think this is a schlock-novel, you are suddenly thrown into some philosophical discussion on say the brutalising effect of colonisation on the colonised; and just as a discussion of Marxist dialectics might make you think the book is a lecture, a torture scene cut short by a fire-fight or ended with a visit to a spectacular brothel livens things up

The effect is I have to say 100% Pulp Fiction – a film I once enjoyed, but when I was a lot less mature – and which is no longer my taste in films and certainly not literature.

So overall not really for me – despite a strong finishing section where our narrator – now in an asylum for his sanity and protection discusses two key themes to the book – the different meanings of the title and the concept of the importance of nothing and non-action in someone jaded by their opposites.

But then perhaps I should not have read the sequel to a book I appreciated much less than many others. I will be intrigued to see what fans of the first book (and there are many) make of this.

A couple of side comments:

Firstly I did enjoy the frequent references to the inexplicable French love of the music (if it can be called such of Johnny Halladay) – as well as a reference to “Je t’aime” (as my own experience of oriental/French cultural overlap – a key part of the novel – was a rather odd evening out watching Jane Birkin at the French cultural institute in Istanbel several years back)

Secondly I expect this book to be in strong Booker contention- but wonder how the Chair of the 2021 judges Maya Jasanoff, famous for her book Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World will react to this taunt thrown by some rather pompous French Marxist Academics at the narrator when he questions the success of the Communist revolution in Vietnam

You have to take the long view. Look at America. No one remembers now what happened to the Americans who chose to side with the British king. Should the American Revolution not have happened, or should we condemn it because all those people were exiled?

My thanks to Grove Atlantic for an ARC via NetGalley.

And here you are, safe in your asylum, one of the committed. The question is: Committed to what? You have had two years …. , to confess to the crimes you have committed, to acknowledge that after everything you have been through, everything you have done, you are still committed to revolution, which must mean you’re crazy, but no crazier than the first idealistic cavewoman who dreamed of conjuring fire from nothing, whose fate, after she discovered fire, was most likely being burned at the stake by the more cynical cavemen who knew that fire was really something, was power itself, so that even back then at the earliest moments of human civilization, the dialectic was moving back and forth between aspiration and exploitation, a movement that will never stop, for you agree with Mao that the dialectic is infinite, with one important exception, for unlike Mao and Stalin and Winston Churchill and King Leopold and a lot of American presidents and English kings and French emperors and Catholic popes and Oriental despots and countless millions of fathers, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and playboys, you do not believe that such a dialectic requires the sacrifice of millions in the name of communism or capitalism or Christianity or nationalism or fascism or racism or, indeed, sexism, of which you are guilty, guilty, abjectly guilty, and this conviction in an infinite dialectic that does not require enforcement by a Repressive State Apparatus, this article of faith that history’s wheels need not be oiled by blood, this skepticism about Fanon’s belief in the positive benefits of violence, justifiable given the brutality of French violence in Algeria, but nonetheless blind to the possibility that violence could make us feel like men yet behave like devils, whereas nonviolence could detoxify us and free us from our inferiority complexes, lifts us from despair and fear, and restores the self-respect we need for action, and instead of making us mirror images of our colonizers, nonviolence could break the mirror altogether and liberate us from the need to see ourselves in the eyes of our oppressors, forcing us into the disturbing space of the negative, the nothing, the blank, the void, where we must create ourselves anew, each of us unique, each of us in solidarity with others in their uniqueness, a sincere but maybe stupid belief that makes you a man of either vision or hallucination, but one who insists that humanity already knows everything it needs to know to save itself without resorting to murder, beginning with what the most sympathetic Federico García Lorca, assassinated by the Spanish fascists, once said, “I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace,” an empathetic principle that, if followed with action, whether it is doing something or doing nothing, depending on the dialectical need of the situation, will never lead you in the wrong direction, even if that direction is death, since so many people are committed to the exact opposite principle, to side with those who already have something and want everything

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer, Nguyen further follows the story of a Vietnamese refugee (who now claims the name in his passport is Vo Danh - but this only means "anonymous" in Vietnamese). Short recap: The protagonist fled Saigon during the 1975 spring offensive, used to live as a spy in the US trying to infiltrate Hollywood, ended up in a Vietnamese re-education camp where he, a communist, was tortured by his own allies, then spend time in an Indonesian refugee camp. Now it's 1981, he is 36 years old and flees to France, the country of his father. By his side is his blood brother, a mirror image of himself. Both join a Vietnamese organized crime and prostitution syndicate that gets entangled in a gang war with Algerian criminals. The narrative clue, of course: Algeria and Vietnam were both colonized by France (French Indochina, French Algeria).

Our protagonist is an unreliable narrator, the voice and the perspective keep changing, thus reflecting the mental torment propelled by trauma and circumstance: "He could see that I had a screw loose, the trusty screw that had, for years, held together my two minds." This idea goes back to the phenomenon of "double consciousness" as described by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk and refers to the experience of looking at oneself through the eyes of others, as well as the tension between heritage and dominating culture. No wonder the motif of the mask also features in Nguyen's novel (see Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks).

And there's really a lot of postcolonial and other philospohical theory interwoven in the text in order to discuss the topic of identity and the commitment to ideologies and belief systems: Theodor W. Adorno, Louis Althusser, Simone de Beauvoir, Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Paul Sartre, Voltaire et al. - plus a parody of Bernard-Henri Lévy. And don't forget that there's also the possibility to belief in nothing - what does that men for a person?

In the idea of the "Fantasia" culture show, Nguyen also questions the concept of authenticity. The author himself fled Vietnam by boat when he was four years old, then was flown out to the US from a US military base to a refugee camp in Pennsylvania.

The Committed can be read as a stand-alone book, it combines genre writing and satirical humor with a novel of ideas / a political novel, thus melting high-brow and low-brow literature into one. Nguyen does not take sides, but questions everything. In an interview with the wonderful Tommy Orange, Nguyen said that there will be a third and final installment to the series, set in the US.

You can learn more about the novel (or rather its translation, Die Idealisten), in our new podcast episode (in German).

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer was simply a stunning book, focusing on the absurdity of Saigon in the mid-70s from the perspective of an unnamed Vietnamese national. Our Sympathizer is blessed with the curse of sympathizing with conflicting perspectives, often uncovering the preening and pretentiousness of those involved. I read it with awe and couldn’t wait to be a first reader of its sequel.

The Committed follows the dual agent, half-French Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 80s as a refugee, where he becomes a hashish dealer (and capitalist). The focus is on his survival as a Vietnamese outsider in post-war France, trying to understand his shady past and fuzzy future.

The writing is still stellar and the observations—that range from capitalism vs. communism, political commitment, cultural assimilation, French colonization, sullied loyalties, and cognizant dissonance—are thought-provoking. But the irony and absurdity is replaced, to a large part, by philosophical musings. While these musings fully display the author’s brilliance in understanding the issues that define the exile of his multi-faceted original character, it does not thoroughly immerse this reader.

Right from the first few lines, which echo its predecessor, it becomes obvious that this book shouldbest be read as a follow-up rather than a standalone. Since I read The Sympathizer a few years back, there were times I needed to search my memory about, say, the narrator’s re-education experiences or certain meaningful connections he had (such as Man). I think it could be challenging for a reader who came into this cold, without familiarity with the back story.

Read it for the lyricism, the intellect, the brilliance of the prose, the historical insights, the unsparing observations. But do not expect the same kind of reading experience as The Sympathizer. I am grateful to Grove Atlantic for the advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review and thank them for their many incredible titles.

[Nastja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Экзальтированное описание затянувшейся дефекации, сопряжение куннилингуса и похода в церковь, костюмированная оргия, влияние марксистской теории на торговлю наркотиками, семь гномов с поварскими тесак��ми, читающий Фанона охранник, пытки, перестрелки, гашиш, тайный бордель под названием «Рай» и другие проделки астральной проекции Пелевина на современную американскую литературу.

И еще, конечно, новый роман Нгуена вполне мог бы быть старым фильмом Тарантино со слоганом «Карнавальное начало всех кончало».

[Ari Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up. A sequel to Nguyen's Pulitzer-prize-winning The Sympathizer, with which it shares some of the same strengths and weaknesses. Instead of scathingly satirizing American exceptionalism and the unintended blowback from the Vietnam War, he pulls apart the scars of French colonialism in Vietnam and Algeria.

In The Committed, the Sympathizer, aka Crazy Bastard, aka Vo Danh, has survived a Viet Cong reeducation camp, a harrowing experience as a Boat Person, and an Indonesian refugee camp to wash up in Paris in the early 1980s. There he adopts the disguise of a Japanese tourist to sell hashish and heroin to haut-bourgeois Left Bank Marxists as an accomplice of a Vietnamese exile organized crime and prostitution syndicate, based in "the worst Asian restaurant in Paris," in the midst of an escalating turf war with an Algerian drug-trafficking network.

(Lots of half-clever in-jokes along the way that overstay their welcome: a thinly-veiled version of the insufferable French TV intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy (or is it the equally heinous Dominique Strauss-Kahn?) appears as a character named BFD, and one of the main clients is an aging soixante-huitard at the Sorbonne known as "The Maoist PhD.")

But the promotional copy is overselling this as a postmodern "intellectual thriller," with shades of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, John Woo two-gun shoot-em-ups, and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge. Really, this is a work of postcolonial theory scaffolded with allusions to classic action movies, but you really have had to have taken a graduate seminar to closely engage with these ideas, let alone enjoy the windy diatribes and soliloquies in which they appear.

Like The Sympathizer, The Committed needed an editor to prune away 100 pages or so. But I assume that winning a Pulitzer means having final cut, an editorial decision that always ends badly. Rather than baroque plotting with a predictable Fight Club - level final twist (which was The Sympathizer's major shortcoming), The Committed is overstuffed, far past the bursting point, with exhaustive (and exhausting) ruminations on the ideological impact of French colonialism in Indochina, Algeria, and Africa, as characters (and the narrator) stop the action for lengthy disquisitions on Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Althusser's Repressive State Apparatus, Adorno, Derrida, Gramsci, and Julia Kristeva, which drag on like undisciplined M. A. theses.

I don't want to overlook that The Committed is a master class in narrative voice and unreliable narrativity, as Nguyen channels the inner monologue of a divided and fracturing consciousness. The Crazy Bastard is a passive and reactive protagonist, with few ideological commitments of his own, stuck spinning recursive looping thought-spirals in which he relives past traumas from the previous novel (which I should probably have reread first), haunted by the ghosts of the men he's betrayed and killed before, and facing the dilemmas of communism vs. capitalism, the ridiculousness of French racism (legally impossible but pervasively corrosive), and the futility of postcolonial liberation, with a nihilistic shrug. And as our narrator's consciousness fragments and downshifts from the first into the second person, the whole impossible machine derails in the denouement, set in a strange limbo between life and death.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for providing an ARC, in return for an honest review.

[PattyMacDotComma]

DNF
“Behind the register was the maître d’ and musical curator, Le Cao Boi, who, from looks to manners, was the typical romantic Vietnamese man: part poet, part playboy, and part gangster.”

I enjoyed The Sympathizer, which precedes this and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, but I have slowed to a standstill at 39% in this one. Like ‘Le Cao Boi’, this seems to be made up of many parts, but mostly it's political, and it wore me out. I enjoy sarcasm and satire and humour, and there's plenty of that, too. Incidentally, I haven't come across any direct reference to Le Cao Boi being a wanna-be cowboy, but he really is one.

“Le Cao Boi adjusted his aviator sunglasses, which he never removed, not even during lovemaking, or so it was said, especially by him. He was proud of their name-brand status as authentic American Ray-Bans, not, as he liked to point out, cheap imitations. Le Cao Boi was fashion-conscious, from designer socks to hair so streamlined with pomade that not a strand moved regardless of whether he was declaiming poetry (his own), making love (energetically), or swinging his favored weapon, a baseball bat gifted by an American cousin. It was Le Cao Boi’s bitter experience to come as a refugee to France instead of America, the country for which he pined during his youth in Cholon.”

Gangs, drugs, racism, brothels, and lots and lots of politics, philosophy, and drunken conversations about all of those things, particularly anger against the French and their colonisation of Indochina (as the area was called before). To me, if felt like a case of ‘you had to be there’ to enjoy the banter and debate, although I'm not sure I'd have stayed for the evening anyway.

The narrator is of two minds, warring with each other, and I feel a bit the same. I think the writing is great and the information and history are interesting as well as appalling. I’m sorry none of the characters or their actual situations held my attention enough to care.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the copy for review. I apologise for letting you down.

There's an excellent Guardian article by the author a year ago that gives some more background and concerns for the future.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

My review of The Sympathizer 5★

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new book from the award-winning author of the The Sympathizer. Nguyen continues the story of the former Vietnamese soldier with no name who is now living in Paris with his blood brother Bon. As refugees, they hope France will be better to them than America was. After all France proclaims they believe in "liberty, equality, and fraternity...(but just not yet, at least for you.)" He is known to most in the immigrant community as 'the crazy bastard.' He IS crazy and he IS a bastard after all. He has been a communist and a spy, but now he turns his interests to capitalism, mainly because he needs money to live.

What is he committed to, you might ask? He is committed to nothing, and that has great meaning for him. The book is largely a discussion of ideology, politics, religion, racism, sexism and basically how he and so many others have been unfairly treated by all of these. If you enjoyed the writing style and characters of The Sympathizer, you are likely to enjoy this sequel as well. I did and give it 4 stars.

I received an arc from the author and publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks.

[Paolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

In preda ad atroce e pensavo irreversibile blocco del lettore mi imbatto in questo Il Militante di Viet Thahn Nguyen freschissimo di stampa.
Che balsamo ! Che lettura! Già il Simpatizzante era stata una bella rivelazione , ma questo seguito lo surclassa per piazzarsi tra i miei capolavori di sempre.
Il Capitano, il Pazzo Bastardo, il "tu" narrato del primo romanzo, fuggito dal Vietnam con altri profughi (si chiamavano boat people all'epoca - anni 80) approda a Parigi, meta obbligata per molti Vietnamiti ed ancor più per il protagonista, che è figlio illegittimo del prete francese.
E qui si dipana la storia - avvincente - del suo soggiorno parigino nella comunità vietnamita, divisa in due tra ex vietcong ormai istituzionalizzati ed ex collaborazionisti in esilio, fieri oppositori del regime vittorioso.

Stupefacente la capacità di Nguyen di tenere le fila di una trama magmatica e di potentissime analisi, riflessioni e descrizioni di un caleidoscopio di ambienti che fanno da sfondo alla vicenda:
Volete una storia di spionaggio che vi fa sentire sempre l'adrenalina in circolo, con una spia doppiogiochista che rischia in ogni istante di essere scoperto (e di conseguenza ucciso), Nguyen ce l'ha pronta per voi.
Volete una potente storia di amicizia virile tra eroi dannati un po' del tipo De Niro/Woods in C'era una volta in America ? ecco serviti.
Desiderate ampliare l'esperienza sensoriale della guerra nel Vietnam nel solco di Apocalypse Now ed Il Cacciatore, profumo di napalm e roulette russa compresi ? La troverete.
Scene di violenza inaudita da provocare subitanei orgasmi ad un Quentin Tarantino ? ci sono.
Personaggi indimenticabili ? quanti ne volete, con particolare menzione per la figura della "zia".

Ma poi anche e soprattutto un'indagine chirurgica, lucidissima e potente della storia del secolo breve, che è occupato per larga parte da colonizzazione e sfruttamento, nella sua seconda metà sottoforma di guerra mondiale decentrata in luoghi - per l'appunto come il Vietnam - ben lontani dal giardino di casa. E questa riflessione sulla storia come "banco del macellaio" è la parte culturalmente più rilevante, per di più meravigliosamente amalgamata con la vicenda.
E viene sviluppata nella descrizione dell'attività del Pazzo Bastardo, assoldato dalla malavita asiatica di Parigi che combatte nei recessi della banlieu una guerra senza quartiere con l'altra comunità di ex colonizzati - gli algerini, per il controllo del mercato della droga. Spacciata - quasi una nemesi - presso una cerchia di intellettuali assai tipici della Parigi anni '80, ex sessantottini, ormai confortevolmente sistemati nella Francia mitterandiana, con i loro completi griffati, ricercatamente trasandati, che, a differenza del protagonista, non soffrono nessun conflitto e nessuno sdoppiamento, ma si sentono la coscienza rivoluzionaria sempre in pace per aver fatto un paio di cortei pro -Vietnam.
Il Capitano invece no, comunista infiltrato, mezzo europeo, con due amici fraterni sui versanti opposti, che il Vietnam l'ha fatto davvero, vive in questo conflitto e forse ne muore.
Nguyen è americano (ma tra i ringraziamenti finali si intuisce che il suo debito nei confronti della cultura francese è grande, un destino cui, da bravo colonizzato, non sfugge), è professore universitario, ma la storia che racconta è fatta soprattutto di fango, sangue e merda.

Se vi piacciono le carinerie minimaliste di scrittori e scrittrici del Primo Mondo e le loro analisi delle terribili ferite psichiche derivanti dall'aver assistito alla rottura della zampa del gattino da piccoli, questo libro non fa per voi.
Se vi sono piaciuti Vita e Destino o Furore, correte a comprarlo.

[Marc]

I don't doubt he can write, this Nguyen, sure, but his show off-prose really isn't my thing. I gave it 100 pages. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for it, but this made a really boring impression. It's not the themes he writes about (the 3 great c's: colonialism, capitalism and communism), and it's not the setting (Paris!), but it's his prose-on-speed that didn't do it for me. Did not finish, so no rating.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2021 NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR!
Real Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The long-awaited new novel from one of America’s most highly regarded contemporary writers, The Committed follows the Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris as a refugee. There he and his blood brother Bon try to escape their pasts and prepare for their futures by turning their hands to capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.

No longer in physical danger, but still inwardly tortured by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into a dominant culture, the Sympathizer is both charmed and disturbed by Paris. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals and politicians who frequent dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt,” he finds not just stimulation for his mind but also customers for his merchandise―but the new life he is making has dangers he has not foreseen, from the oppression of the state, to the self-torture of addiction, to the seemingly unresolvable paradox of how he can reunite his two closest friends, men whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition.

Both literary thriller and brilliant 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: My 5* review of The Sympathizer from 2016 is here: https://tinyurl.com/2p9he4wj.

"The American Way of Life! Eat too much, work too much, buy too much, read too little, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity. No, thank you. Don't you see that's how Americans take over the world? Not just through their army and their CIA and their World Bank., but through this infectious disease called the American Dream?"
–and–
But the only revolution you can commit to is the one that lets you laugh and laugh and laugh, because the downfall of every revolution is when it loses its sense of absurdity. This, too, is the dialectic, to take the revolution seriously but not to take the revolutionaries seriously, for when revolutionaries take themselves too seriously, they cock their guns at the crack of a joke. Once that happens, it’s all over, the revolutionaries have become the state, the state has become repressive, and the bullets, once used against the oppressor in the name of the people, will be used against the people in their own name. That is why the people, if they wish to survive and to dodge those bullets, must be nameless.

Home truths, not dodgeable conversational bullets, but full-on machine gun nests of home truth.

It is Author Viet Thanh's stock in trade, isn't it? Follow the link to my 2016 review if you haven't encountered him and his cleaning-vinegar acidulated prose. Powerful the takedowns, sick the burns, and no human is spared from the collateral-damage list:

Those who believe in revolutions are the ones who haven’t lived through one yet.
–and–
......you, yourself, human and inhuman, are demented enough to believe that if the human species does not self-destruct—an IF that should be capitalized, it is so big—then one day the nobodies of the world with nothing to lose will finally have enough of not having enough and realize that they have more in common with the nobodies on the other side of the world, or just the other side of the nearest border, than they do with the somebodies of their own kind, who care nothing about them, and when these nobodies with nothing finally unite, stand up, take to the streets, and claim their voices and their power, the only thing that the somebodies with something must do is nothing, realizing that their Ideological State Apparatus cannot stop all these people, because for all of its might their Repressive State Apparatus cannot kill them all. Can it?"

It can now. It hasn't started to yet. But AI-plus-facial-recognition drones? You'll see 'em soon enough. I guarantee you they're being or have been prototyped and now can be deployed...what's a few extra dead who were "innocent" whatever that means? "God" will know her own, after all.

I have never been a chirpy optimistic sort. I fall into the Butlerian Jihadist camp these days. I do not know Author Viet Thanh, so I speak without certainty of his opinion on matters facing us today. I think, having read his exploration of revolution in these two (to date) novels about the Sympathizer, that it is likely to be the case that he does not view anything that increases the capacity of humans to oppress and exploit each other ever more efficiently in a positive light.

...what the most sympathetic Federico García Lorca, assassinated by the Spanish fascists, once said, “I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace,” an empathetic principle that, if followed with action, whether it is doing something or doing nothing, depending on the dialectical need of the situation, will never lead you in the wrong direction, even if that direction is death, since so many people are committed to the exact opposite principle, to side with those who already have something and want everything, and if you were sane you would side with them, too, but revolution is always an act of insanity, because revolution is not a revolution unless it is committed to the impossible.
–and–
There was only one solution to this alienation that was created not by the Negro or the bastard, but by the real bastards, the racists and colonizers who blamed the victim for the conditions that the victimizer created. And that solution was “to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and, through one human being, to reach out for the universal.”

That is exceedingly well-put and inarguably accurate; it's also the next thing to impossible to achieve. In reality, no one escapes reaching out for the universal's darkest spot:

Organized religion was the first and greatest protection racket, an economy of perpetual profit built on voluntary fear and coerced guilt. Donating money to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, cults, et cetera, to help ensure a spot for one’s soul in the express elevator to that penthouse in the sky known as the afterlife was marketing genius!
–and–
This was the silence my father encountered every day during his prayers, the silence that hundreds of millions heard every day as they beseeched God to say something, anything. He always said nothing, which hardly disabused His legions of fans. For someone who never said anything, God certainly spoke to a lot of people.

Religion has become the Way and the Life for those too scared to rebel, too lazy to think, too smug to see past their own privilege.

No, of course I'm not bitter and rage-filled, why ever would you ask?

There remains the matter of my missing half-star. I've quoted the book at you to show how deeply I liked the read, to give the percentage of you who won't read it a taster of the treasures you're disinclined to see for yourselves. I was not as utterly swept up in this part of the Sympathizer's tale for several reasons. One was, I'm not coming to it fresh; I've been in his head before, so the impact is lessened as the flint cores of meaning flake into eye-surgery-grade blades. Another is deeper: howinahell did these men get into this awful, messy business? "Why not" is the only answer I can find in the story. It allows Author Viet Thanh to ladle on the Perils-of-Pauline hairsbreadth rescues and other coincidences. I'm not a massive fan of that kind of storytelling. It shows the author, unlike in The Sympathizer, already knows the ending, so we're along for the (entertaining) ride.

I forgive it all, almost unreservedly, for this moment where I felt so Seen: "You are upset because I made you see yourself. You like to think of yourself as just a man, not a white man, unless you call yourself white, with a certain kind of self-aware irony. But for me to call you a white man is unacceptable, downright racist, even if you yourself and all white people routinely say of someone “an Asiatic woman” or “a black man,” as if a black man were not just a man as you are just a man. So what if I noticed your whiteness—how unforgivable!"
Ouch...yes.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as I’m concerned Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer is one of the most consequential American novels of the last quarter century. In terms of giving voice to a generally unspoken American ethnic experience, and in terms of translating theory into compelling and humorous narrative, it comes close to the surpassing excellence of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. We’re going to need another three or four decades to be sure, but it has a chance to stand as one of the major works of the century.

Given all that, I had mixed feelings when I heard Nguyen was writing a sequel. Like Ellison, he ended that first novel on a note suggesting that his protagonist had blended into a larger whole. From the “lower frequencies” of Invisible Man to the image of the man-of-two-minds sympathizer squeezing into a mass of boat people, each ended in deeply satisfying fashion. Each unnamed protagonist seemed to take his place as a representative man, someone we might come across in real life and never fully recognize.

The Committed, no surprise, can’t escape the shadow of its predecessor. At times, that’s a good thing. I have spent a lot of time reading that first book – I have read it at least four times, I have taught it twice, I have presented on it at a professional conference, and I have even had two brief conversations with Nguyen – and much of what happens here is a gloss on that. As much as I love the glorious ambiguity of the double-ness of “Nothing is more important than independence and freedom,” it’s reassuring to have Nguyen himself confirm my reading of it.

It’s striking as well to see Nguyen exploring some of the implications of the existence of a character like the sympathizer. He has lied for so long to so many people that it’s difficult to imagine what his authentic self might look like. In the person of his best friend Bon, the lifelong anti-communist, we have someone who is indeed committed to what he says he is.

The final, troubling chapter of the book plays out that contrast in explicit fashion. After the now tripartite disassembling of the sympathizer into me, myself, and I, we get fourth and fifth sections on “vous” and “tu.” Bon slips into that second-person space, and – in a trauma as great as anything the sympathizer has undergone [SPOILER: Bon’s decision to kill himself rather than live with the realization of the sympathizer’s communist sympathies] – he slips into Bon’s mind. Through the sympathy he feels for his closest friend, he experiences a second-hand sense of coherence that nearly breaks him. (In fact, he speaks for much of the book as if he is actually dead at Bon’s hands. He is not.)

In addition, we get much of Nguyen’s characteristic humor. The laughs are never knee-slappers. Instead, they are steeped in irony and informed by post-structuralist and critical-race-theory awareness. They’re funny if you’ve thought about these fundamental questions and arrived at some of the same confused positioning of the sympathizer, and perhaps Nguyen himself.

So, at bottom, it’s worth reading this both as a commentary on the first book and as a good second helping of the tone that contributed so much to the original.

At the same time, there are flaws here, substantial ones by the standards Nguyen set for himself the first time around.

This is, finally, a badly plotted novel. The Sympathizer spun out from two or three satisfying premises; our protagonist, as a double agent, had to try to betray the General and his anti-communist forces, and that meant he would eventually have to betray the self he had presented to the world for most of his life.

Here we get a much more contrived story. Bon and the sympathizer wind up as gangsters for no clear reason other than to force the characters into a series of violent conflicts. It’s a tired move, and I say that as someone who wrote a dissertation on the literature of the gangster. If that’s not enough, there are two scenes – two! – where the sympathizer is on the brink of being killed before someone bursts in to take out the torturers who are about to shoot him.

And then comes the seemingly unnecessary visit from Man/the Commissar to Paris, setting up Bon for an assassination attempt, one that Man seems both to ask for and to try to forestall. [MORE SPOILER:] And the almost gratuitous revelation that Lana has given birth to the sympathizer’s child and kept the news from him. And the spook-ex-machina arrival at the very end of Claude, the sympathizer’s one-time mentor and teacher who, for convoluted reasons, kills him in the closing lines of the book.

And still, if I may, there is the never-quite-resolved sense of how this features as a confession. In the first book, the sympathizer is writing for Man; the entire book is itself an artifact of the story, something he has been compelled to write as part of his re-education. Here, this book may be his therapy with a psychiatrist, and it may all be in his head. Either way, it isn’t quite clear how Claude would have gotten a hold of it – certainly not from his ideological adversary, Man’s aunt, who is the only one seemingly in position to reveal that fact.

I can forgive much of that because the plot of the first book is only a secondary pleasure of it. I am less able to forgive a deeper diminution here.

For me, the great joy of The Sympathizer is that we see someone – the protagonist within the book but seemingly Nguyen as well – using the form of the novel to explore something he does not entirely understand. I see it as a reflection of what Bakhtin teaches us, that the novel is a particular form of inquiry.

Where The Sympathizer feels like a sustained inquiry, though, The Committed feels as if it’s written by someone who already has the answers. We can see that in its much more frequent nod to one or another political philosopher. (There’s even an appendix discussing some of the people who inform the ideas of the novel.) The result is something that’s more of an intellectual game and less an interrogation of a mind that the world has tried to tear in two.

If this book is just a shadow of its predecessor, it’s still a literary event. If you have read The Sympathizer, consider reading this as a commentary on it and for the pleasure of this character’s striking way of interrogating the world.

And, if you haven’t read The Sympathizer, go do that now.

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

In balia delle onde, al buio, su una nave, verso la salvezza, verso la liberazione:

“Fu cosí che trascorremmo la prima notte in mare aperto, tremando alla brezza dell’oceano.
Arrivò l’alba, e ovunque guardassimo vedevamo solo l’orizzonte che si allontanava all’infinito. La giornata era calda, senz’ombra e senza rifugio, senza niente da mangiare se non qualche boccone e senza niente da bere se non a cucchiai, con un viaggio del quale non conoscevamo la durata e con le razioni ridotte al minimo.”

In preda alla disperazione, si leva la preghiera:

“Per alcuni ciò significava pregare; per altri, bestemmiare. Quando una variazione nel moto delle onde spinse con piú forza la nostra nave, uno dei pochi tra di noi che erano marinai sussurrò, Siamo sull’oceano, adesso.”

“Il padre di uno dei bambini morti gridò, Mio Dio, perché ci stai facendo tutto questo?
Fu in quell’istante che tutti capimmo quale fosse la risposta a quest’interrogativo, che l’umanità si porrà in eterno: Perché?
Era semplicemente, e sempre sarà: Perché no?
Estranei uno all’altro quando ci eravamo trascinati a bordo della nostra arca, ora eravamo piú intimi di una coppia di amanti, immersi nei nostri stessi liquami, le facce verdognole, la pelle piagata dal sale e bruciata dal sole. Molti di noi erano fuggiti dalla madrepatria perché i comunisti al potere ci avevano etichettati come marionette, o pseudo-pacifisti, o nazionalisti borghesi, o reazionari decadenti, o intellettuali dalla falsa coscienza, o perché eravamo imparentati con uno di questi soggetti. C’erano anche un’indovina, un geomante, un monaco, il sacerdote e almeno una prostituta, che il cinese seduto accanto a lei accolse sputandole addosso e dicendo: Perché questa puttana è qui insieme a noi?
Perfino tra gli indesiderati esistevano degli indesiderati, e questo, in alcuni di noi, non poté che suscitare ilarità.
La prostituta ci guardò malissimo e disse: Che cosa volete, voi?”

“Guardando quella profonda vallata colore del vino che ci attendeva, fummo certi di due cose. La prima era che saremmo sicuramente morti tutti; la seconda, che saremmo quasi certamente sopravvissuti.
Sí, ne eravamo certi. Noi… sopravvivremo!
E poi sprofondammo nell’abisso, con un unico grido.”

Ritorna, in questo romanzo, il protagonista de Il simpatizzante, il Capitano, con i suoi due fratelli di sangue. Ritorna doppio, nella speranza di riuscire ad unirsi: “Se sei cosí autocritico, disse il Maoista, lo hai capito dove hai deviato dalle masse?
Perché dovrei preoccuparmi di aver deviato dalle masse, quando sono anche me e me stesso? Non sono una massa io per primo? Non sono già un collettivo? Non contengo moltitudini? Non sono sempre, infinitamente dialettico, se passo il mio tempo a cercare una sintesi tra la tesi di me e l’antitesi di me stesso?”

Il Capitano ritorna diviso, a Parigi, e riparte dal silenzio, per riuscire a perdonare e a perdonarsi:

“Chi diceva che le parole non potevano uccidere? Nel pronunciarle, però, io non ero stato consapevole del potere delle mie parole, o cosí mi ero giustificato con me stesso. Ora quel potere lo conoscevo, ma sapevo anche che l’unica cosa piú potente delle parole era il silenzio.”

“Come perdonare l’imperdonabile? intervenne mia zia.
È possibile perdonare l’imperdonabile? precisò l’avvocatessa, e lo sguardo che lanciò a mia zia era cosí carico di passione, e cosí contraccambiato, che mi eccitai quasi. Non c’era niente di piú sexy che condividere le stesse convinzioni in un mondo nel quale erano ben pochi a farlo.”

“Matto? Io? Può darsi. Poi sei scoppiato a ridere e hai aggiunto: Proviamo a vedere le cose dalla prospettiva migliore, però. Se solo i pazzi possono perdonare l’imperdonabile, allora posso finalmente perdonare me stesso.
Ma perfino con quel potere a disposizione non riesci a perdonarti, perché ti chiedi con preoccupazione se Bon potrà mai farlo. Aspetti che Bon si unisca al tuo coro di fantasmi, in modo da poterlo almeno rivedere, ma non ce n’è traccia. Che cosa significa, questo mistero?”

[Nadine in California · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book would make a great Tarantino film, horrifyingly humorous, with an intellectual edge. It's every bit as terrific as The Sympathizer, which should be read first. I read TS six years ago and my book memory isn’t great, but it all came back as I read this one. The protagonist/narrator is an existentially shattered Vietnamese double agent, released from a re-education camp in Vietnam and now a low-level, drug-dealing gangster in Paris. He’s a man of ill-fitting parts - a reluctant killer, an unenthusiastic torturer, and a reader of post-colonial theorists. In his mental monologues he not only takes himself and his life apart, but also artfully skewers Western and Eastern imperialism and their agents - capitalists, communists, socialists, colonizers, colonized, christians. Example:

”Being tortured was, in that sense, like going to church. After a while, neither taught anything new. The ritual and repetition simply reinforced knowledge already known but in danger of being forgotten, which was why torturers plied their trade not just with pliers but with the conviction of priests…”

The book is a confessional, written in a slippery second person, with a rotating cast of 'you's that can include the reader, either of the protagonist’s two minds (which he describes as held together with a wobbly screw), or assorted theoretical enemies. We never learn his name, as befits a spy, although the name on his passport is Vo Danh, (‘Anonymous’ in English) and most people call him Crazy Bastard.

I can’t say this book wears its philosophizing lightly, but it’s not a chore to read - ideas come out of the most surprising characters in the most cleverly crafted ways. I never felt out of my depth, even though my knowledge of anti-colonialist thought doesn’t go very deep. There are no quotations marks for dialogue and this worked really well for me, keeping the writing fluid.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sequel to Pulitzer-winning The Sympathiser is a funny and thought-provoking read. We now see our unnamed protagonist in Paris among ex-pats and in-between identities. We meet many of these we recall from the first book and are treated to an acidic critique of the French and of Parisian society, even if there is a bit of love for the city of lights hidden in among the many violent and sad anecdotes. The discussion of post-colonization in Vietnam is fascinating and I also learned quite a bit of the Vietnamese experience in France from reading this challenging and fast-paced book. I don't think it carries the same punch as its predecessor, but definitely worth reading if you enjoyed that one.

Some quotes:
"And you? I tried to shake off the sadness of my origins that had settled
on me with the inevitability and persistence of dust, but even that little
bit of shaking made my head protest. Where are you from?" (pp. 98)

"Organized religion was the first and greatest protection racket, an economy of perpetual profit built on voluntary fear and coerced guilt. Donating money to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, cults, etcetera, to help ensure a spot for one's soul in the express elevator to that penthouse in the sky known as the afterlife was marketing genius!"

My list of Pulitzer hopefuls for 2022 - stop by and vote today!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

”We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves. Less than nothing, we also saw nothing as we crouched blindly in the unlit belly of our ark. . . Even among the unwanted there were unwanted, and at that some of us could only laugh.”.

Reading Viet Thank Nguyen’s The Committed brings to mind multi-layered Matryoshka dolls and the iconic scene in Orson Welles 1947 noir, Lady from Shanghai, with Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane shooting at each other in a hall of funhouse mirrors. The Committed contains textual layers upon layers: read now, it’s a shoot-em-up bang-bang noir gangster potboiler; read again, it’s an intellectual treatise on race, identity, colonization, and the dialectics of revolution; read some more, it’s a bro-romance and a dirge for broken lives lost loves, and shattered homelands. Fully understanding and appreciating the complexity of The Committed requires more intellectual flexibility than I can summon. It’s 1981, and the thirty-six year old Crazy Bastard (AKA Le Chinois, AKA Vo Danh, AKA Joseph Nguyen) and his blood brother, Bon, arrive in Paris from a Vietnamese re-education camp via a two year stay at the Galang refugee camp in Indonesia, and ultimately on a flight from Jakarta. Paris, the birthplace of the Crazy Bastard’s father. Paris, the home to a sizable and politically divided Vietnamese community. The Crazy Bastard and Bon carry with them ”bags packed with dreams and fantasies, trauma and pain, sorrow and loss, and, of course, ghosts. Since ghosts were weightless, [they] could carry an infinite number of them.” The Crazy Bastard —proud graduate of Occidental College — and Bon earn their way by cleaning toilets in a Chinese restaurant owned by the Boss, managed by his field marshal, Le Cao Boi, and staffed by the Seven Dwarfs. The Crazy Bastard expands his domain beyond cleaning restaurant toilets by peddling hashish to leftist Parisian intellectuals, disguising himself as a Japanese tourist. And of course, the Crazy Bastard being the Crazy Bastard, he doesn’t know whether he’s communist or capitalist, friend or foe, faithful or faithless, or all simultaneously or serially.

The Committed is a sequel to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s splendid The Sympathizer: it stands alone as a novel, and can be appreciated by those who haven’t read The Sympathizer or those, like me, who read it only upon its publication in 2015. This reader sometimes found himself lost between and among the many layers and mirrors in The Committed. The Committed is a Fantasia of a novel, although a Fantasia co-directed by Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo Del Toro. After all, how often do you find Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Andre Malraux, Max Horkheimer, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Ho Chi Minh mentioned in novel alongside characters named Sleepy, Shorty, Biggie, Angry, Smelly, and Lousy?

I would like to thank NetGalley and Grove Press for providing me with an ARC of The Committed.

3.5 stars

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il Bastardo Pazzo

Il Militante conferma che nel 2016 la giuria del Pulitzer non ha compiuto un passo stravagante assegnando il premio per il miglior romanzo a un’opera prima come Il Simpatizzante, perché Viet Thanh Nguyen si dimostra non l’autore di un exploit estemporaneo, bensì uno scrittore di razza, dotato di un’invidiabile gamma di registri così da scongiurare, cancellando i miei pregiudizi, il rischio che questo romanzo fosse soltanto una sorta di Simpatizzante 2, pubblicato allo scopo di sfruttare il successo del precedente nel riprendere il racconto delle gesta dell’anonimo protagonista.

Laddove il precedente poteva essere definito principalmente un romanzo di spionaggio in una perfetta ambientazione storica e politica culminante nella caduta di Saigon e quindi un’opera drammatica, in alcune parti tragica e commovente, Nguyen sfodera in Il militante sia una notevole capacità di riflessione, sia una sorprendente vena ironica, grottesca, a tratti addirittura umoristica, esageratamente surreale, nel mescolare uno spericolato “gangster thriller” parigino al dramma interiore del personaggio principale, sempre più lacerato dalla fenomenologia del doppio o più banalmente dalla tipologia dell’ibrido o “bastardo” (vietnamita/francese; comunista/capitalista; orientale/occidentale).

Oltre che Bastardo a tutti gli effetti, Vo Danh (pseudonimo improvvisato per ottenere un passaporto…!) è sicuramente anche Pazzo come evidenziano le infinite volte in cui va deliberamente a cacciarsi nei guai, gli improvvisi, irrefrenabili e spesso immotivati scoppi di pianto, il parlottare ad alta voce col gruppo sempre più affollato dei fantasmi dei personaggi di cui ha più o meno direttamente causato la morte, un consesso che genera spiacevoli ma esilaranti equivoci, e così via…

Il romanzo comprende anche sfaccettature più intime, nel richiamo alla figura perduta della madre vietnamita, nel rapporto difficile e contraddittorio con i suoi due “fratelli di sangue” Man e Bon che il destino ha trascinato su strade opposte e antitetiche (non senza reiterate meditazioni sulla sorte del Vietnam, patria vilipesa e rimpianta) e nel complesso reinserimento di Vo Danh in Usa (in Il Simpatizzante) e poi in Francia (in Il militante) proprio le due potenze occidentali che hanno violentato e distrutto il suo paese.

C’è materiale abbondante anche per acute dissertazioni sul tema del razzismo, complementare al rapporto dei bianchi con i “musi gialli” non meno che nei confronti dei neri e dei maghrebini, ma resta solo lo spazio per concludere che si tratta di un romanzo che non rivoluzionerà la narrativa contemporanea (neanche “Il Simpatizzante”, peraltro…) ma estremamente divertente, ben congegnato, dallo stile acuto, effervescente e carico di sorprese (qui omesse per timore di spoiler…), cui non si arriva ad assegnare il massimo dei voti solo per alcuni eccessi e ripetizioni (nella seconda parte un’overdose di scene tarantiniane in cui qualcuno dialoga a lungo tenendo qualcun altro sotto il tiro della pistola… anche se in qualche caso il colpo inaspettatamente parte davvero!!)

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Committed is the sequel to The Sympathizer and follows our nameless antihero who is no longer a spy as he stumbles into Paris and a life of drugs, crime, gangs, and politics. "We were the unwelcome, the unwanted, the ignored, invisible to anyone but ourselves": this is how this work begins. The protagonist of the new novel is still the young Captain of the South Vietnamese army who, in the "Sympathizer", after the fall of Saigon in 1975, flees to the United States and, unbeknownst to his friend and blood brother Bon and the chief general of the South Vietnamese National Police, sends his reports to Man, his trainer in the Vietcong ranks. After spending his American years in the condition of alienation and invisibility typical of a refugee and a communist spy, in the early 1980s, with the passport of a certain Vo Danh in his pocket, the sympathizer lands in Paris in the company of the inseparable Bon. France, the country of long colonial domination in Indochina, granted the two blood brothers the coveted right of asylum. It is an opportunity for both of us to leave behind the painful wounds of the past. An opportunity to be cultivated through the purest of capitalist activities, offered by the Vietnamese Boss who moved from the Palau Galang camp to Paris: drug dealing and trading. For Bon it represents the possibility of ceasing to be an unwelcome guest. For the sympathizer, who has spent a good part of his life believing in something in whose heart there was nothing but nothing, simply another possibility given to nothing.

A nothing, this time, which makes Paris a city with a murky charm and which makes the intellectuals engagés of the French left frequented at the home of the Vietnamese "aunt", to whom Man addressed him, nothing more than a loyal clientele of the Boss's substances . Finally, nothing that makes it difficult to carry out the task that has always harbored in the soul of the sympathizer: the reconciliation between the blood brothers of the past, Bon and Man, that history, with its cruelties and its blind passions and hopes, he placed on opposite sides. This is a richly-detailed, acutely perceptive and truly captivating read and a masterclass in how to pen a literary thriller that has depth and intelligence in abundance. It's exhilarating, refreshingly original and I loved the exploration of existentialism and prominent French philosophers such as Sartre and de Beauvoir and what words of wisdom they shared. The narrator is as unreliable as they come and is intelligent, charismatic, charming, modest, bookish and often immensely funny. Just the sheer complexity and multilayered nature of his character makes him ambiguous, fascinating and thoroughly engaging and his opinions on racism, colonialism, ideology and the vastly different culture and traditions in France and Vietnam were always intriguing. His musings on whether the colonised can ever really be free were also thought-provoking. This is an eccentric crime tale that highlights the complex legacy of the Vietnam War. Highly recommended.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this right after reading The Sympathizer so I was still riding that high and I wanted to continue on with the Captain who is now a Crazy Bastard or just simply rather crazy.

This one is a mix of crazy action and long philosophical asides. I must admit that I got rather lost in the 'asides' as Nguyen was in a dialogue with philosophies, ideologies, which I am not on point with so I could not really join into that dialogue.

If I had a wish for this book it would be that I wished for a better balance between action and philosophy, after all the proof of words is when they're made out into flesh, that is action. I wish this particular baby had not been lost in the philosophical bath water.

But for all this I was fully on board with the Captain and his struggles with nothing and contradictions which seem to be a universal condition, and life in general. It's a pity that he has for the moment abdicated from joining us in this world and has decided to fall down the rabbit hole that his thoughts have dug up.

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps the zaniest, most jaw dropping read I had in 2020, this book is now out (March 2021) and I'm finally getting around to reviewing it. The Committed returns to the improbable life story of protagonist of The Sympathizer which not necessary but probably quite helpful to read that first (I did not read it and while I could have used some backstory sometimes I just let myself get swept into the current story). And it's essentially a dark comedy with smart, incisive observations about culture, politics, religion, war, colonialism, identity, masculinity, race relations, in France, Vietnam, and the U.S... I found myself laughing out loud, nodding ferociously, smirking and marking down lines. Like we get:

That night my aunt and I smoked the finest hashish and drank the finest Haut-Medoc and listened to the finest American jazz, that black-and-blue music so beloved by the French partially because every sweet note reminded them of American racism, which conveniently let them forget their own racism

And

The most difficult thing, when offered two false choices, was imagining a third choice, withheld deliberately or otherwise. This was the most basic lesson of the dialectic, the swing between thesis and antithesis that allowed one to reach a synthesis. Whether the thesis or the antithesis was communism or anticommunism, the point was that they composed the polar opposites of what the West unironically called the Cold War, as fought between the USA and USSR. But the synthesis was the recognition that this war had been extremely hot for us Asians, and Africans, and Latin Americans. Seeing the failures of both communism and anticommunism, I chose nothing…

There was a 5 page discussion of the infinite orifice of the toilet and anus, there was seemingly 20 pages full stream of consciousness no breaks or punctuation violent altercation that was so strange and yet so authentic to what it might be like to be in the fight (or at least for our highly frenetically thinking protagonist)... WEIRD but also well done? There are so many layers of interaction between individuals and nations that are in the whirling narrative of The Committed, and it can give you whiplash how many ideas are being thrown at you amidst the series of unfortunate events and super strange set pieces Nguyen is setting up. This is a book that requires completely surrender: you give yourself over to Nguyen's brain and words and settle into the guise of our protagonist, or you'll find yourself highly confused and need to reorient constantly.

I think Nguyen is a hell of a writer - he has shown quite a range across his novels and short stories - although he can fixate and get repetitive at times, and the emotional impact he (I think) intended seemed blunted in comparison to the literary tricks, intellectual bits, and wordplay games. But overall this was fun, freewheeling and thought provoking. I LOVED Nguyen's The Refugees (mildly uneven as a collection but with absolutely brilliant stories) but had started and dropped The Sympathizer (the squid sex turned me off and I wasn't expecting or appreciating at that moment the humor and breakneck, stream of consciousness narration). But my enjoyment of The Committed encourages me to try the first volume again. What an intelligent, bizarrely enjoyable time! Highly recommended to lovers of weird literary fiction that are willing to embark on a wild ride, 4 stars with fondness.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much improved sequel to Nguyen’s more famous The Sympathizer, The Committed expands on Nguyen’s gift of voice to tell a much more personal tale of half French half Vietnamese existence. It’s a good tale for the bicultural minded, and a good exercise in how to plot well without throwing away emotion.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhilarating novel that’s both a spy/suspense story and a novel of ideas, history and colonialism, told with a gonzo amount of verve and wordplay. The last few sentences didn’t quite land for me, but that’s just one more reason to be eager for Nguyen to conclude his trilogy.

[Gavin Armour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hui, hier nimmt es einer nochmal richtig ernst mit der Dialektik – oder zumindest einer Vulgärversion davon. Nach seinem aufsehenerregenden Debut THE SYMPATHIZER (2015), wofür ihm der Pulitzer Preis verliehen wurde, legt Viet Thanh Nguyen mit THE COMMITTED (Original 2021; Dt. DIE IDEALISTEN, 2021) den Nachfolger vor, nach der Aussage des Autors wohl der mittlere Band einer angestrebten Trilogie.

Der namenlose Held, der sich in seinen gefälschten Papieren den Scherz erlaubt, sich Vo Danh zu nennen – dem vietnamesischen Pendant zum westlichen Anonymus – und damit seinen Status als Namenloser, als Flüchtling unter Millionen Flüchtlingen betont, ist, nach seinen Erlebnissen in den USA und Vietnam, wohin er mit einer konterrevolutionären Kampftruppe eingesickert war, verhaftet, gefoltert und schließlich zu einem über 500 Seiten langen Geständnis genötigt worden war, das dann DER SYMPHATISANT wurde, in Paris gestrandet. Gemeinsam mit seinem Freund Bon, einem Kommunistenhasser, arbeitet er für seinen alten Boss, der nun nicht mehr in Revolution, bzw. Konterrevolution macht, sondern in Drogen.

Wer sich erinnern mag, weiß noch, daß der icherzählende Held im Herzen ein Kommunist ist, zugleich aber längst die Widersprüche und Untiefen dieser Ideologie entdeckt hat. Hinzu kommt die besondere Disposition seiner Abstammung: Die Mutter Vietnamesin, der Vater ein französischer Priester und Missionar, ist er zwischen der vietnamesischen Kultur und der französischen Dekadenz hin und hergerissen, kann er doch beidem allerhand abgewinnen. Und so zerreißt es ihn schier, kann er die dialektische Bewegung aus These, Antithese und Synthese, die sich allerdings nie zufriedenstellend einzustellen scheint, gleich an der eigenen Person empfinden. Im übertragenen Sinne ist er Herr und Knecht, basierend auf Hegels berühmten Gleichnis, in einer Person. Und so kann dieser Vo Danh, so kann Viet Thanh Nguyen, anhand der eigenen Geschichte über Kolonialismus, Rassismus, über Unterdrückung, Verachtung und, was vielleicht im Kontext dieses Buches das Wesentliche ist, über die Selbstverachtung, den Selbsthass jener reflektieren, die kolonialisiert wurden und oftmals in einem Bewußtsein vermeintlicher kultureller Unterlegenheit aufwuchsen.

Obwohl der Ich-Erzähler ganz offensichtlich über ein hohes Maß an Intelligenz und Selbstreflektion verfügt, bleibt sein Narrativ für den Leser allerdings prekär, schwierig einzuordnen. Wie der Leser am Ende von Band eins begreifen musste, es mit einem letztlich erzwungenen „Geständnis“ zu tun zu haben, wodurch all das zuvor Gelesene in Frage gestellt wurde, konnte man sich doch mit einmal nicht mehr sicher sein, ob hier einer Rechenschaft ablegt oder doch nur gefällig schreibt, um sein Leben zu retten – hinzu kam, daß sein Verhöroffizier sein früherer Blutsbruder Man war – so wird der Leser hier nun von Beginn der Erzählung an vor das Problem gestellt, nicht mehr zu wissen, mit wem er es zu tun hat. Mal ist von einem Ich die Rede, mal von einem Wir, womit wahlweise die zwei Seelen in der Brust des Erzählers bezeichnet werden, durchaus aber auch das Heer der Flüchtlinge oder das Kollektiv des vietnamesischen Volkes. So werden die Lektüren, denen er sich anvertraut und denen er vertraut – allen voran die Schriften Frantz Fanons – zur einzig verlässlichen Konstante der Erzählung.

Fanons DIE VERDAMMTEN DIESER ERDE oder auch sein SCHWARZE HAUT, WEISSE MASKEN werden im Kontext von DIE IDEALISTEN zu Beglaubigungen jener Kämpfe der 50er und 60er Jahre, die die sogenannte Dritte Welt aus der imperialistischen Unterdrückung, aus den Fängen des Kolonialismus´ befreien sollten. Es sind Werke, die lange vor allen Colonial Studies der 70er und 80er Jahre begriffen hatten, daß es für die Opfer von zweihundert Jahren Imperialismus dringend und zwingend nötig war, ein eigenes kulturelles Bewußtsein zu entwickeln. Der Autor, Fanon, konnte sowohl aus einer eigenen Leidensgeschichte schöpfen, als auch aus seinen Erfahrungen während des Algerienkrieges. Er ist sozusagen durch sein Tun in seinen Werke beglaubigt. Damit zieht Viet Thanh Nguyen eine weitere, vielleicht die bissigste dialektische Ebene in sein Werk ein. Denn in Paris trifft der Erzähler, vermittelt durch seine Tante, die als Lektorin fest im Kulturbetrieb verankert ist, auf allerhand Intellektuelle und Salonbolschewisten, die zwar große Worte und totes Pathos wie eine Monstranz vor sich hertragen, im Buch aber allesamt als doppelzüngig, bigott und recht schamlos dargestellt sind. Vor allem, wenn es um die Befriedigung eigener Bedürfnisse geht. So gerieren sie sich alle nur allzu gern als Herrenmenschen, wenn auch postmodern ironisiert, wenn sie in einem Edelpuff sexualisierten Kolonialismus nachspielen.

Die Tante ist befreundet mit einigen Intellektuellen und Politikern, die unschwer als Parodien auf reell existierende Figuren zu erkennen sind. Allen voran BFD, der sich als intellektueller Politiker geriert und in dem unschwer eine Karikatur von BHL – Bernard-Henri Lévy – zu erkennen ist, ein Hansdampf in allen Gassen des öffentlichen politischen wie intellektuellen Lebens in Frankreich. Und auch eine mit der Tante befreundete Anwältin dürfte ihr Vorbild, wenn auch ein männliches, in der realen Figur des Jacques Vergès haben, ein Mann, der sich selbst gern als Sozialist bezeichnete, sein Geld vornehmlich aber damit verdiente, Massenmörder, Diktatoren und Kriegsverbrecher zu verteidigen – unter anderem zählte er Klaus Barbie, besser bekannt als „Schlächter von Lyon“, zu seinen Klienten. Vergès argumentierte seinerseits gern dialektisch, um die Auswahl seiner Mandate zu erklären.

Da die Geschichte, die DIE IDEALISTEN erzählt, 1981ff. spielt, wird unser ungewisser Erzähler allerdings auch mit einer weiteren dialektischen Ebene konfrontiert, die sein Selbstbild möglicherweise mehr erschüttert, als bspw. der Verlust seiner ideologischen Überzeugungen es könnte. Denn es ist die Zeit, in der sich nicht nur ein neues französisches Denken, repräsentiert durch Theoretiker wie Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard oder Jacques Derrida, aufmachte, mit hermeneutischen Gewißheiten und dem eurozentristischen Blick auf Geschichte und globale Entwicklung aufzuräumen. Vielmehr ist es auch die Zeit, in der Theoretikerinnen wie Julia Kristeva, deren Werk DES CHINOISES (Original erschienen 1974; Dt. DIE CHINESIN, 1976) hier so oder so immer unterschwellig mitgedacht werden sollte, gerade, wenn der Erzähler sich in den Reflektionen darüber verliert, wie einstige Kolonialisten – die chinesischen Völker die bspw. die vietnamesische Urbevölkerung einst verdrängten; oder auch die Vietnamesen selbst, die ihrerseits Laos und Kambodscha überfielen – selbst zu Kolonisierten werden können, oder eine Hélène Cixous ganz eigene Schlüsse aus dem poststrukturalistischen Denken zogen und dem westeuropäischen Feminismus völlig neue Impulse gaben. Mit einem Werk von Cixous wird der Erzähler dann auch konfrontiert und begreift mehr und mehr, daß es neben den Unterdrückten und den Verdammten dieser Erde noch einen Bevölkerungsanteil gibt, deren Sprachlosigkeit und Elend viel universaler zu nennen ist – die Frauen.

Je mehr der Berichterstatter sich also in Fragen kultureller Prägungen, Eigenverantwortung, Ideologien und ihren inneren Widersprüchen und schließlich den eigenen Unzulänglichkeiten als Mann verliert, desto mehr wächst in ihm der Eindruck, das Einzige, was es zu verstehen, zu begreifen gäbe, sei das Nichts. Dabei verwahrt er sich allerdings strikt dagegen, als Nihilist bezeichnet zu werden. Vielmehr will er damit eine Abkehr von all diesen Items und Einzelgedanken markieren und in einen Kreislauf eintreten, der das Individuum sich selbst spüren lässt, die eigenen Gefühle und Gefühlswelten wahr- und annehmen lässt.

Das klingt, als habe man es hier mit einem hochphilosophischen Werk zu tun. Das stimmt sogar bis zu einem gewissen Grad. Allerdings gibt Viet Thanh Nguyen sich alle Mühe, darin ganz seinen Kollegen von der postmodernen Autorenschaft verwandt, zu banalisieren, zu vulgarisieren und die so hochtrabend wirkenden Gedanken sprachlich derart zu verunreinigen, daß all die Reflektion, all die theoretischen Überlegungen selbst bereits wieder in Frage gestellt werden. So scheut der Autor sich nicht, auch auf die „Dialektik der Hundescheiße“ einzugehen, ausgelöst durch das Malheur, in eben jene getreten zu sein. Der Unernst schwingt hier immer mit und es gelingt auch immer mal wieder, mit einem gewissen Witz von den höchsten Höhen theoretischen Denkens sehr schnell, manchmal mit einem einzigen Wort, in die Niederungen alltäglicher Verrichtungen und schließlich auch jenen verbrecherischen Machenschaften zu gelangen, mit denen diese Exilvietnamesen ihr Geld verdienen. Denn im Kern ist der Erzähler ein Drogendealer, der aufgrund seines unscheinbaren Äußeren und seiner devoten Art, die er zu seinen größten Talenten zählt, zudem all der Kontakte seiner Tante ein Verteilernetz für Haschisch und Opium unter der linken Intelligenzija und Schickeria aufzubauen.

Im Grunde enthält dieser als Politthriller gelabelte Roman auf seinen 491 Seiten erstaunlich wenig Handlung. Bon, der Kommunistenhasser, will den „Mann ohne Gesicht“ töten, den er für den Mord an Frau und Tochter verantwortlich macht und von dem er nicht weiß, daß es sich dabei um Blutsbruder Man handelt. Der Erzähler seinerseits will dies unbedingt verhindern, was am Ende des Romans zwangsläufig in die Katastrophe führt. Der Mangel an (spannender) Handlung wird durch die seitenlangen Reflektionen ausgeglichen. Allerdings – und hier muß die eigentliche Kritik ansetzen – wirken diese Reflektionen dann irgendwann auch redundant. Zum einen hat, wer sich mit den angeschnittenen Themen beschäftigt, das meiste davon irgendwann schon einmal gehört oder gelesen. Und auch Viet Thanh Nguyen weiß – trotz etlicher kluger und für einen westlichen Leser durchaus auch überraschender Gedanken – der Thematik nun auch nicht so viel Neues hinzuzufügen. So tritt irgendwann ein gewisser Wiederholungseffekt ein. Das ermüdet und vor allem tritt das Buch dadurch auf der Stelle. Und wenn dann Handlung einsetzt und vorangetrieben wird – in manchmal geradezu unerträglichen Szenen wie jener, in der der Erzähler und seine Kumpane, angeleitet vom Boss, wochenlang einen gefangenen Nordafrikaner foltern und befragen – wirkt dies häufig gehetzt und getrieben.

So bleibt nach der Lektüre ein zwiespältiges Gefühl. Hier nimmt es einer, wie gesagt, sehr ernst mit der Dialektik, weiß mit dem scheinbar so alten Konzept auch durchaus etwas anzufangen, nutzt eine Sprache, die durchaus entlarvend ist, für alle, auch für den Erzählenden, und die man kunstvoll (Dank an dieser Stelle an den Übersetzer Wolfgang Müller, dem es gelingt, sie kongenial ins Deutsche zu übertragen) nennen darf, die in ihrer gelegentlichen, sehr gewollten, Vulgarität und Drastik aber nicht zu schockieren versteht und dadurch oftmals aufgesetzt unernst wirkt.

Bleibt nun also abzuwarten, ob Viet Thanh Nguyen sein Vorhaben wahr macht und einen dritten, dann wohl in den USA angesiedelten Abschluß seiner Trilogie vorlegt. Bleibt zu hoffen, daß er dann – ganz dialektisch – die besseren Teile der Vorgänger zu einem großen Finale synthetisiert.