The Sympathizer, by Viet Nguyen, is a new breed of noir novel, which academia is turning out these days. The author is a distinguished man of letters at in California, so I would expect nothing less from him. And he doesn’t disappoint. This is the story of the Vietnam conflict told through the eyes of an undercover spy, a mole, a deep operative, a man without a name who is a metaphor for so much. Except that he can’t seem to remember who he is.