Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer is the story of a nameless communist spy who is disturbed by his own political beliefs. He is a half French and half Vietnamese communist agent, who is conflicted about his own views on events. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator explains that he is being held as a prisoner and is being forced to write a letter of confession for the edict. A clash of thoughts, a sequence of dualities. Born and raised in Vietnam, he is a Vietnamese spy in South Vietnam serving their officials. Nguyen is a Vietnamese born novelist, who had his first novel The Sympathizer published in 2015, which granted him 7 awards, including the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction award. He was born in 1971 and fled to the United states
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The story takes place in Asia Minor (making up the majority of modern turkey), the United States, and then later in the United States and Germany, thus it contains many allusions to Greek mythology. The novel starts with the protagonist, Cal Stephanides. (S)he is an intersex man who is born with a condition called 5-alpha-reductase deficiency; it causes a male to have feminine traits. The narrator then explains his experience regarding his discovery, and his family’s history, and going through gender identities throughout his teenage years. Jeffrey Eugenides is an American writer, mostly focusing on novels and short stories. He has written three novels in his career, these include Middlesex (2002), The marriage plot (2011), The virgin suicides (1993). His most famous book Middlesex has granted Jeffrey 3 awards, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. The novel is based on Eugenides’ own beliefs and experience, however, he is not an intersex in real life. According to him, he has worked on this novel for almost nine years and most of that time was spent on perfecting the narration of the story. The novel suits my interests because the main character is going through changes and realizations that most teenagers would be going through. It also provides the reader with a perspective of an intersex and what themselves and their family is going through, and emotional and sexual states
The story takes place in Asia Minor (making up the majority of modern turkey), the United States, and then later in the United States and Germany, thus it contains many allusions to Greek mythology. The novel starts with the protagonist, Cal Stephanides. (S)he is an intersex man who is born with a condition called 5-alpha-reductase deficiency; it causes a male to have feminine traits. The narrator then explains his experience regarding his discovery, and his family’s history, and going through gender identities throughout his teenage years. Jeffrey Eugenides is an American writer, mostly focusing on novels and short stories. He has written three novels in his career, these include Middlesex (2002), The marriage plot (2011), The virgin suicides (1993). His most famous book Middlesex has granted Jeffrey 3 awards, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. The novel is based on Eugenides’ own beliefs and experience, however, he is not an intersex in real life. According to him, he has worked on this novel for almost nine years and most of that time was spent on perfecting the narration of the story. The novel suits my interests because the main character is going through changes and realizations that most teenagers would be going through. It also provides the reader with a perspective of an intersex and what themselves and their family is going through, and emotional and sexual states