{"product_id":"the-committed","title":"The Committed","description":"Product Description      \n'A voice that shakes the walls of the old literary comfort zone' New Yorker 'Goes toe to toe with the original then surpasses it. A masterwork' Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of a Brief History of Seven Killings'Fierce and unrelentingly good. Hilarious and subversive' Tommy Orange, New York Times bestselling author of There There------------------------------------It's the early 1980s and the Sympathizer arrives in Paris. As a refugee, he and his blood brother Bon try to escape their turbulent pasts by turning their hands to capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing. No longer in physical danger, the Sympathizer is both charmed and disturbed by Paris. Falling in with left-wing intellectuals and politicians at dinner parties held by his French Vietnamese \"aunt\", he finds customers for his merchandise as well as stimulation for his mind. But this new life he's living has unforeseen dangers of oppression, addiction and the seemingly unresolvable paradox of reuniting his two closest friends, men whose world views stand them poles apart.The highly suspenseful sequel to The Sympathizer, both literary thriller and brilliant novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen's position in the firmament of American letters.\n      Review      \nCall\nThe Committed many things. A white hot literary thriller disguised as a searing novel of ideas. An unflinching look at redemption and damnation. An unblinking examination of the dangers of belief, and the need to believe.\nA sequel that goes toe to toe with the original then surpasses it. A masterwork. ―\nMarlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings\n\nThis follow-up to his seminal\nThe Sympathizer is\nNguyen at his most ambitious and bold. Fierce in tone, capacious, witty, sharp, and deeply researched,\nThe Committed marks, not just a sequel to its groundbreaking predecessor, but a sum total accumulation of a life devoted to Vietnamese American history and scholarship. This novel, like all daring novels, is a Trojan Horse, whose hidden power is a treatise of global futurity in the aftermath of colonial conquest. It asks questions central both to Vietnamese everywhere - and to our very species: How do we live in the wake of seismic loss and betrayal? And, perhaps even more critically, How do we laugh? ―\nOcean Vuong, New York Times-bestselling author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous\n\nA\nbrilliant rollercoaster of ideas and action. ―\nDaily Mail\n\n\nAn elegy to idealism, Orientalism, and existentialism in all its tragic forms, Nguyen's novel doesn't so much inhabit early eighties Paris, as it pulls the plug on the City of Light. Think of\nThe Committed as the declaration of the 20th ½ Arrondissement. A squatter's paradise for those with one foot in the grave and the other shoved halfway up Western civilization's ass. ―\nPaul Beatty, author of the Man Booker prize-winning The Sellout\n\n\nThe Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen's\nfurious and exhilarating sequel to\nThe Sympathizer, is part gangster-thriller, part searing cultural analysis of the post-colonial predicament, seen through the eyes of a Vietnamese-French mixed race bastard double agent. Paris of forty years ago swirls to life around him, from intellectual salons to filthy toilets-with glimpses of everyone from Johnny Hallyday to Frantz Fanon to Julia Kristeva.\nLike Ellison's Invisible Man, these novels will surely become classics. ―\nClaire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children\n\n\nThe Committed is\nnothing short of revelatory . . . This book is fierce, and unrelentingly good. Hilarious and subversive, philosophical and hallucinatory, it is much more than a sequel, more like a necessary appendage in a\nbrilliant and expansive anti-colonial body of work. Bravo. ―\nTommy Orange, New York Times-bestselling author of There There\n\n\nThe Committed is\na rich and exhilarating story of friendship, loyalty, and greed. Set i","brand":"smeikalbooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40140566626389,"sku":"9781472152534N","price":5.39,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/products\/ad239201-12c1-483c-8dc1-14b630abf392.jpg?v=1656436647","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/products\/the-committed","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}