Before the Decade Ends, Here Are the Best Novels of the 21st Century

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)

In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut best-selling novel, The Sympathizer wears a number of hats: political, mystery, metafiction, historical, spy, war, and more. An anonymous narrator acts as a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army. The narrator stays embedded in a South Vietnamese community in exile in Los Angeles, California, where he describes being an expatriate and cultural advisor on the set of a film resembling Apocalypse Now. Later, he returns to Vietnam as part of a guerilla raid against the communists.