The Cleaved Mind

The Committed 

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

“The typical American preferred the canned version of philosophy found in how-to manuals, but even average Frenchmen and Vietnamese cherished a love of knowledge.”  ― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

Having read and enjoyed Nguyen's prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, I looked forward to reading his new novel. In it, once again the reader is presented with a unique mix of realistic action and superb emotional detail. The author also includes literary and philosophical references like the comment at one of his aunt's salons, "God is dead. Marx is dead., and I don't feel so well myself," - a rare bit of levity in what is otherwise a very serious tale. 

It is a tale narrated with the same memorable voice as the previous novel, The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. He says "our bags were packed with dreams and fantasies, trauma and pain, sorrow and loss, and, of course, ghosts. Since ghosts were weightless we could carry an infinite number of them." (p 5) The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. In his attempts to deal with his ghosts he acquires lessons from a coterie of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese "aunt." Through these he experiences stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. Strewn throughout the novel are references from the works of Sartre, Fanon, Kristeva, and de Beauvoir, and these are in addition to his interactions with the drug-dealing crime boss he works for in Paris. But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition. The Sympathizer will need all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to prevail.

Both literary thriller and novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal. Its intensity was sometimes difficult to consider, but necessary to maintain the idea of what his new life meant to him. This novel maintained my interest and left me looking forward to a potential third novel by this outstanding author.