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Book Reviewed by: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.
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.
Just like The Sympathizer, The Committed is not a pleasant book, but it is an important book. I wouldn't even really call it an enjoyable book, although it is a joy to read Nguyen's masterful turns of phrase and skillful wordplay. He truly is an exceptional writer and it is this gift, along with the pulpy nature of the storyline, that keeps us reading curiously, pushing through our discomfort to engage with the ideas and philosophies that Nguyen presents. It is in this sense that the sequel furthers the mission that the first book began, by pushing boundaries and confronting difficult truths...continued
Full Review
(669 words)
(Reviewed by Jennifer Hon Khalaf).
In The Committed, Vo Danh immigrates to Paris in order to escape danger. As the illegitimate child born from sexual abuse between a French priest and a Vietnamese woman, Vo Danh is a metaphor for the rape of Vietnam perpetrated by French colonialism. He goes back to his fatherland to confront the post-Vietnam War legacy and how it synthesizes with this post-colonial inheritance. The longstanding relationship between France and Vietnam and its uneasy power dynamics are reflected in the nature of the Vietnamese-French community which Vo Danh joins.
Vietnamese history is one of repeated invasion and resistance. France became complicit with that history in 1887 when it colonized modern-day Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, forming a federation ...
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Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
Call The Committed many things. A white hot literary thriller disguised as a searing novel of ideas. An unflinching look at redemption and damnation. An unblinking examination of the dangers of belief, and the need to believe. A sequel that goes toe to toe with the original then surpasses it. A masterwork.
