Viet Thanh Nguyen: Spy, Sympathizer, Son

“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces,” Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 debut novel, “The Sympathizer,” begins. The unnamed narrator is a biracial, American-educated communist informant in the employ of a South Vietnamese general in the waning days of war. His twin faces — North and South, East and West, communist and nationalist, white and not — grant him the titular sympathy that is both a blessing and a curse. A “man of two minds,” he commiserates with his foes as easily as he deceives his friends.

Read more from The New York Times here.