"The Committed" by Viet Thanh Nguyen "2021"

The Committed is the second book of the series of The Sympathizer. It picks up where we left the protagonist, Vo Danh (nameless), in the first book on his way to Paris as he and his blood brother, Bon, attempted to flee the now communist Vietnam in search of a life in the land of his father. 

By far, this is my most maimed book; marks and notes are all over it. Luckily, it's a digital copy. Anyway. This book is dense and juicy, oozing with big ideas. If I could, I would've highlighted the whole thing.

The Committed is different from The Sympathizer when it comes to the purpose of the main guy. In the first book, he is a spy with a broad mission to inform on any insurgencies by the American-backed-up South Vietnamese in America. In this book, he's no longer tied to anything. He roams the world wherever the wind stirs him. He's purposeless in a meaningless world.

The protagonist is on a relentless hunt for the truth, principles, for idealism, for something to rely on that is inherently good and solid and unchanging, for consistency. That's why he keeps shifting and changing his beliefs over and over: from catholicism to atheism (because, perhaps, of his pedophilic father who neglected and disavowed him), from communism to a capitalist drug dealer (because of the Viet Cong's reeducation program). So he's an ex-theist, ex-commie, ex-mole, ex-something. The guy, according to Juan Cortez from Far Cry 6, 'got more ex's than anyone's porn search history.' 

Throughout the book, Vo Danh isn't anywhere near satisfaction. And it's quite normal because what he's looking for is something akin to a fairy tale, a holy grail, a fountain of youth sort of a pursuit, because it's ideal, and everything ideal is prone to corruption. There's no black and white. "Corruption is a way of life... That’s how the world spins, gives us night and day." He believed in revolution and communism because "capitalism has become the worst version." i.e. it became corrupt. And when the heavy price was paid for the revolution to succeed, he was shocked to see what he's been fighting for turn into what he's fighting all along. "three million people dead for this revolution? We had simply traded one Repressive State Apparatus for another one, and the only difference was that it was our own."

The moral of the story: do not draw a halo on anyone or anything and idolize it because 'nothing is sacred! Everything can be transgressed'.

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Summary:

There's a saying that goes 'If you don't want to offend anyone, don't talk about either politics or religion'. The Committed is anything but politics and religion. So, if you're easily offended by these topics, this book is definitely not for you. Viet Thanh Nguyen has a voice that is powerful, shameless, and unapologetic. 

The series is a feast for philoso-philias, a platform for political debates, and a hell of an entertainment show of dark humor and cynical absurdities.