Nov 29, 2021

The Committed

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

TIME Staff

Open follow modal

Personalized Content

TIME Staff

Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts.

FollowGo to your personalized feed

WHY FOLLOW?

Custom Feed: See the stories that matter most to you.
Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens.

Update your preferences in Account Settings

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; this highly anticipated sequel exceeds expectations. The story picks up in early 1980s Paris, where our unnamed French-Vietnamese double agent has arrived with his brother, both hoping to leave behind their traumatic experiences in re-education camps. What this means is assimilating to Parisian life, and opening up to a world run by their people’s colonizers. The narrator approaches these tensions with ambivalence and, at times, cynicism—he finds stimulating community among French intellectuals but he’s very aware of the racism they’re certain they lack—and eventually turns to drug dealing to make a living. The Committed is a thrilling and thought-provoking examination of contradicting identities and ethical ambiguity.

Buy Now: The Committed on Bookshop | Amazon