It’s supposed to look at the revolutionary process within an individual and the changes he undergoes. The ambition of writing “The Sympathizer,” besides making an entertaining story and a historical novel, was that it was also supposed to be a political novel in which you look at politics that are happening in terms of revolutions. I was not thinking about a trilogy, which is what it is now, but when I finished writing “The Sympathizer,” I thought that I was not done with this character. NGUYEN: When I set off to write “The Sympathizer,” it was supposed to be a one-off novel. Was it from a story-driven perspective that you decided to write a sequel to “The Sympathizer,” or a desire to explore how France deals with its complicated past in the country? It was the Americans who really did the bad things here.” And so the French could go to Vietnam now, and a lot of the French still go to Vietnam, and do things like help Vietnam in various kinds of projects and stuff and get away with thinking, “We weren’t that bad. So, the whole idea of French colonialism became one of romance, of the luxurious past, and it allowed the French and everybody who loves French culture to sort of just take a pass on the actual history. And so we have this huge removal visually from the French period and instead we have this rise of nostalgia and colonial exocitism about that period, both in these movies but also in things like themed restaurants. What we have essentially from the French period are a lot of black and white photographs for the most part, which don’t typically record the worst things that were done.
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So, in contrast, Americans fought a war and were in Vietnam at a time when we had immediate access to all kinds of technology… Americans were sort of responsible themselves both for initially reporting this conflict very vividly and then making movies about this war very vividly and in full color to permanently sort of impress the image of the American war in Vietnam as a horrible, dirty war in the minds of both the American people but also audiences all over the world.Īnd the French, again, did not have that record. There were plantations, forced labor, all this kind of stuff going on.
The Vietnamese revolutionaries who rebelled against the French called themselves “slaves of the French.” That’s how the anti-French Vietnamese thought of themselves.Īnd that is not romantic or beautiful or anything like that. And I felt that this was probably a good indicator of how the French got a lucky break with this history, because what the French did in Vietnam, if you read the historical accounts, was really pretty terrible. They were brutal, about terrible atrocities and all this kind of stuff. And they dealt with various aspects of this history, but they were both sort of beautiful, lush movies about romance, and it was an interesting contrast to the movies that Americans were making about the war in Vietnam, which were not lush and beautiful. NGUYEN: Well, I remember as a college student - this was ‘92 - two movies came out from France - “Indochine” and “The Lover.” These were very popular movies at the time, and they both dealt with the French period of colonization in the 1920’s to the 1950’s. How do you believe France remembers their impact on Vietnam, compared to how America remembers their impact on the country? The Signal spoke with Nguyen in a discussion about French colonialism and “The Committed.”
In his follow-up novel, “The Committed,” Nguyen turns his attention to France, with the titular character relocating to 1980s Paris, uncovering a world of bureaucratic authority and left-wing radicalism while confronting the past atrocities of French colonization in Vietnam. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” Nguyen explored American culture and the country’s impact on Vietnam, as well depicting how refugees and immigrants are treated as they adjust to their new lives and new surroundings in the U.S. Viet Thanh Nguyen has certainly not gained a reputation for pulling any punches when it comes to social commentary.