Viet Thanh Nguyen

The sequel to The Sympathizer, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, The Committed follows the "man of two minds" as he comes as a refugee to France and turns his hand to capitalism, dealing drugs in 1980s Paris but unable to escape his past

The Committed

Katie Chua

viet thanh nguyen is really fucking smart. i think i liked the sympathizer more, but i liked how more explicitly political and philosophical this one was. 

this book sometimes feels like it's was just begging to be put on a syllabus for asian american lit, which makes sense because nguyen studied english literature and specializes in that, so it helped when reading this to know about the theorists he mentions about understanding asian diaspora/colonization/imperialism/capitalism. if i didn't have that knowledge, i feel like this book would be hard to understand, but maybe i'm being elitist (?)

Michelle Guo

Gripping story and thoughtful final message. Not quite as seamless or impactful as The Sympathizer, especially in the second half, but it wrapped up nicely in the end. At times the wordplay and allusions felt like low-hanging fruit.

Laura England 

A brilliant sequel to The Sympathizer. I was captivated from page 1 and was so impressed by how Nguyen communicates the shattered mind of “the man with two minds.” The inclusion of the historical image and event was a fascinating inclusion.

Udit Desai

Fasihah Abd Razak 🌺🐧

Andrew Ireland

Evan Huang

Riley Baker

Arnav Shah

Nat Lim

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.

The Committed

Reviews