Sara Lawrence reviews The Committed for Daily Mail.
This is a sequel to the Vietnamese-American author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel The Sympathiser, but it also works as a standalone.
It features the same deep-thinking, often guilt-ridden narrator, Vo Danh (‘nameless’), a veteran of the South Vietnamese Army where he worked undercover for the communists. With his blood brother Bon he survived both re-education and refugee camps.
The book starts with them arriving in early 1980s Paris in search of a different life.
Our protagonist is both charmed and disgusted by this new world, keen to assimilate but it’s not easy for the Vietnamese living in France, where racism remains rampant.
It is especially difficult for Vo Danh when he becomes a drug dealer, the ultimate capitalist. A brilliant rollercoaster of ideas and action.
