The Sympathizer

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction “[A] remarkable debut novel”—Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review (cover review) The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as seven other awards, The Sympathizer is one of the most acclaimed books of the twenty-first century. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabokov, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who comes to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping spy novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Sympathizer tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. This short summary and analysis of The Sympathizer includes: Historical context Chapter-by-chapter overviews Profiles of the main characters Themes and symbols Important quotes Fascinating trivia Glossary of terms Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work About The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book depicts the secret life of an unnamed Vietnamese man, grappling with various identities, whose story begins with the evacuation of Saigon, continues with his life living in America after the war, and ends with a shocking twist. Written in the form of a confession, this darkly humorous tale is a brilliant, long-overdue addition to the canon of immigrant literature. Part spy novel, part political thriller, and part satire, The Sympathizer offers smart, scathing, and timely commentary on the state of race, class, war, politics, and the media. The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.

Interviews from the Edge presents a selection of conversations, drawn from 50 years of the international journal New Orleans Review, that dive head-first into the most enduring aesthetic and social concerns of the last half century. From reflections on the making of literature and films to personal accounts of writing inside racial divides and working against capital punishment, the writers, poets, and activists featured in this book offer not only a fresh perspective on our present struggles but also perhaps a way through them-for writers and readers alike. “I think it's frightfully important, and this is really much more difficult than it sounds, only to say what you absolutely believe.” – Christopher Isherwood “Most American writers probably do not think of their writing as a kind of activism. And it shouldn't have to be-I don't think we can impose that on writers-but it can be. I think for many writers, the ones I admire-it is.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen “Do you become a writer because you desire to become famous and make a lot of money? Or do you become a writer because there's something you discovered, this spark, this flash, that you want to share with other human beings knowing that they can enter into the words too?” – Sister Helen Prejean “The hardest part of developing a style is that you have to learn to trust your voice. If I thought of my style, I'd be crippled. Somebody else said to me a long time ago in France, 'Find out what you can do, and then don't do it.'” – James Baldwin “As I have grown older, I have come to see that the romantic notion of the outsider in love with death doesn't solve a thing. It only makes life worse. We have to find ways to create communities.” – Valerie Martin

This collection of essays explores the main concepts and methods of reading launched by French philosopher Jacques Derrida who died in 2004. Derrida exerted a huge influence on literary critics in the 1980s, but later there was a backlash against his theories. Today, one witnesses a general return to his way of reading literature, the rationale of which is detailed and explained in the essays. The authors, both well-known and younger specialists, give many precise examples of how Derrida, who always remained at the cusp between literature and philosophy, posed fundamental questions and thus changed the field of literary criticism, especially with regard to poetry. The contributors also highlight the way Derrida made spectacular interventions in feminism, psychoanalytic studies, animal studies, digital humanities and post-colonial studies.

The question of whether there can be a distinctively female ethics is one of the most important and controversial debates in gender studies, philosophy and psychology today. Rethinking Feminist Ethics; Care, Trust and Empathy marks a bold intervention in these debates and bridges the ground between women theorists disenchanted with aspects of traditional ethics and traditional theories that insist upon the need for some ethical principles.

The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne offers students and teachers an introduction to Hawthorne s fiction and the lively debates that shape Hawthorne studies today. In newly commissioned essays, twelve eminent scholars of American literature introduce readers to key issues in Hawthorne scholarship and deepen our understanding of Hawthorne s writing. Each of the major novels is treated in a separate chapter, while other essays explore Hawthorne s art in relation to a stimulating array of issues and approaches. The essays reveal how Hawthorne s work explores understandings of gender relations and sexuality, of childhood and selfhood, of politics and ethics, of history and modernity. An Introduction and a selected bibliography will help students and teachers understand how Hawthorne has been a crucial figure for each generation of readers of American literature.

"The present treatise, contains a Systematic Exposition of Mind, a History of the leading Questions in Mental Philosophy, and a copious Dissertation on Ethics. The Exposition of Mind, occupying nearly half the work, is, for the most part, an abridgement of my two volumes on the subject. I have singled out, and put in conspicuous type, the leading positions; and have given a sufficient number of examples to make them understood. It is not to be expected that the full effect of the larger exposition can be produced in the shorter; still, there may be an occasional advantage in the more succinct presentation of complicated doctrines. As regards the Controverted Questions, I have entered fully into the history of opinion, so as to present the different views, both formerly, and at present, entertained on each. Nominalism and Realism, the Origin of Knowledge in the mind, External Perception, Beauty, and Freewill, are the chief subjects thus treated"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Adam Smith’s contribution to economics is well-recognised but in recent years scholars have been exploring anew the multidisciplinary nature of his works. The Adam Smith Review is a refereed annual review that provides a unique forum for interdisciplinary debate on all aspects of Adam Smith’s works, his place in history, and the significance of his writings for the modern world. It is aimed at facilitating debate between scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, thus emulating the transdisciplinary reach of the Enlightenment world which Smith helped to shape. The fifth volume of the series is a special issue to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Contributors to this volume include Stephen Darwall, Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Patrick Frierson, Charles L. Griswold Jr, Ryan Patrick Hanley, Alice MacLachlan, Bence Nanay, Angelica Nuzzo, D.D. Raphael, Ian Simpson Ross, Emma Rothschild, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Arby Ted Siraki and Robert Urquhart, who discuss: The phenomenology of moral life Sympathy, moral judgment and the impartial spectator Issues such as aesthetics, value, honour, resentment, praise-worthiness, cosmopolitanism and religion

Prequel to the USA Today Bestselling Malediction Trilogy Below Forsaken Mountain, a plot is being hatched to overthrow the tyrant king of Trollus, and Marc is the right-hand man of its leader. His involvement is information more than one troll would kill to possess, which is why he must keep it a secret from everyone, even the girl he loves. After accidentally ruining her sister's chance to become queen, Pénélope is given one last opportunity by her father, the Duke d’Angoulême, to make herself useful: she must find proof that the boy she’s in love with is conspiring against the crown. If she fails, her life will be forfeit. Marc and Pénélope must navigate the complex politics of Trollus, where powers on all sides are intent on using them as pawns, forcing them to risk everything for a chance at a life together. Except being together may turn out to be the greatest risk of all. File Under: Fantasy

"We need a philosophy of both history and spirit to deal with the problems we touch upon here. Yet we would be unduly rigorous if we were to wait for perfectly elaborated principles before speaking philosophically of politics." Thus Merleau-Ponty introduces Adventures of the Dialectic, his study of Marxist philosophy and thought. In this study, containing chapters on Weber, Lukacs, Lenin, Sartre, and Marx himself, Merleau-Ponty investigates and attempts to go beyond the dialectic.

The Distant Shores of Freedom analyses literary works in English written by Vietnamese refugees in the US. Fiction and memoirs by Vietnamese Americans recover stories and memories that are often different from mainstream American ones and that difference enables readers to think of the US war in Vietnam from perspectives that are missing in mainstream representations. Dwelling not only on the war and its aftermaths, Vietnamese American writings also ponder over the existential issues of exile; the idea of home; the pain of marginality and racism; the question of community formation within the US; and the complexity of diasporic lives. Subarno Chattarji raises critical questions such as who gets to speak and write, and to what ends and purposes? Who reads Vietnamese American writings and how can we account for these publications in the US over a period of time? What can and cannot be written or spoken? What is remembered and what is silenced? What traumas and memories are articulated? These questions point towards a larger context of diaspora studies as well as 'the rituals of cultural memory' that complicate our understanding of the Vietnam War and its aftermaths.