Viet Thanh Nguyen's "The Committed": A Novel About the Pursuit of Identity

Kesari: Thank you

United States on Dec 21, 2023

ML: If you read The Sympathizer, even if it frustrated you toward the end, go ahead and read The Committed. It is a masterpiece that stays solid all the way through and resolves its conflicts in a satisfying denouement. You do need to have read The Sympathizer first, though, for full appreciation. It is interesting when one of the characters in The Committed gives our protagonist the nickname of “Camus”. If you enjoy Camus, Dostoevsky, Kafka, etc., you will be on familiar terrain with The Committed. Viet Thanh Nguyen does a superb job of tying together the many complementary and conflicting themes of Christianity, Buddhism, humanism, absurdism, existentialism, feminism, and colonialist oppression as the protagonist’s understanding of himself and his relation to the world is gradually realized. This is actually the book that should have won the Pulitzer Prize. Maybe consider the prize for The Sympathizer similar to a publisher’s advance for a completed work. Taken together, the two books more than justify the prize.

United States on Dec 09, 2023

Tariq Butt: I am an avid reader. This has to be the best book I have ever read. A sequel to The Sympathiiser, it is a thriller, philosophical, humourous with a fast moving narrative that keeps you hooked on. A super must read.

United States on Sep 23, 2023

BOB: In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ‘The Sympathizer,’ the nameless narrator’s ability to sympathize with opposing viewpoints and ideologies proved to be his super power that made him ideally suited to be a double agent. As we find out in the conclusion of that masterful novel, it also proved to be a curse once he was caught, tortured, and reprogrammed by his communist blood brother, the man without a face but a name, Man. On the other side of that divide, was his other blood brother, rabid anti-Communist Bon. These self-described ‘three musketeers’ of childhood became literal blood brothers, each drawing blood from his palm and mixing it with the others.

In ‘The Sympathizer,’ the nameless man’s double nature prompted him to embark on the covert mission of taking back the South Vietnamese homeland, yet in his double agent role as a communist he was really fighting on the side of his handler, Man, yet at the third (and real?) level, he was attempting to save Bon, Man, and, if possible, himself, in a futile, absurd, suicidal mission.

In the sequel, ‘The Committed,’ published in 2021, we see that the nameless narrator has...

United States on Jun 24, 2023

JPH: The Committed carries on the story of the Sympathiser and doubles down on the cynicism, and a critique of hypocrisy, social theory (as done by the French) , misogyny and lots of other things while keeping a thriller type plot moving forward and keeping the narrator consistent (if unreliable). Brilliant!!

United Kingdom on Jun 30, 2022

K Lowe: Best book I’ve read in ages. Sharp, philosophical and so funny: “If two women are talking to one another and there is no man present are they actually making any sounds?”

United Kingdom on May 04, 2022

Book Dad: Wow. These two books - the Sympathiser and the Committed - are quite brilliant. I’m going to have to read them again. Maybe then I can write a review that does them justice.

United Kingdom on Aug 17, 2021

wfritsch: I felt like having read this before: The Sympathizer (which was very good). The Paris sequel does not give me the impression of authentic experience; too much fiction, difficult to believe scenarios. First half was quite interesting to read - as a crime novel - then it becomes increasingly predictable and boring towards the end. The writing style needs patience getting used to - too much "crazy".

Germany on May 10, 2021

Sherif AbdelSamad: Viet Nguyen is one of my favorite writers. In the Sympathizer he had set the bar so high, that he did himself injustice. The Committed is not as powerful, but a really good and amusing read. a literary film noir with sometimes exaggerated plot twists, yet as in the Sympathizer, Nguyen goes to court with colonialists regimes. his literature is for third world people who feel vindicated reading his angry and sarcastic prose. Yet I felt he could have taken more time to refine the writing. Still it is so much better than most of what is out there now.

Germany on Mar 25, 2021

BazzzzG: I did enjoy The Sympathizer, despite the writer calling a key character "the crapulent major" every damn time, as if that were a title or writers were limited to one adjective per person. Now we have the continuation of that story in The Committed, and there's some fine writing and commentary to be found here on colonialism, communism and capitalism. But the book bored me. The plot repeatedly stalls, interrupted by rambling and paragraphs without purpose. There's excess and self-indulgence on display, including one paragraph that putters on for nearly seven full pages. I applaud anyone creating new paths or breaking moulds in writing, but this attempt at that is not one to emulate. While there's much to admire in this work, there's also much to regret. Some of the writing reads like a first draft, the storytelling fails to impress, the plot often losing pace and lacking a primary piece providing narrative tension to pull readers forward. In sum, this book needed a better editor, one who would have cut away the ample fat and paid far more attention to plot and storytelling.

United States on Mar 07, 2021