#note/sourcereview/book | #source/book📚/fiction | #source/book📚/ingested ## What is the story? A challenging first-person narrative from the point of view of a double agent working for the North Vietnamese during and just after the Vietnam world. The protagonist has no belonging, is the result of a relationship between a white village priest and his mother who was a young adolescent, he is forever "a bastard" existing between two worlds but not belonging to either. He tries to change the world from many angles, participating in the creation of an _Apocalypse Now_ type movie, assassinating journalists, and eventually returning to the homeland to try to assist in the management of a small insurrection without killing his best friend. ## What else do I wonder about? The story should give any of us pause as we try to fix the world: are we ever sure which side we are on? How do we manage when we are helping or hurting, or what will be the implications for our choices and values as we try to navigate the shifts of time and power. ## Action [[epistemic humility]] cataracts through my mind, my [[ways of knowing]] should be challenged with [[Socratic questioning]] at every turn. "I developed a growing sympathy for the man in these pages, the intelligence operative of doubtful intelligence. Was he a fool or too smart for his own good? Had he chosen the right side or the wrong side of history? And were not these the questions we should all ask ourselves? Or was it only me and myself who should be so concerned?" Q/A at end of book ## When do I want to stumble across this? [[Perspectival knowing]] ## Source: Nguyen, V. T. (2015). _The sympathizer_ (First edition). Grove Press. ![[🐓 Idea Farm/Deadfall/For myself only/Readwise/Books/The Sympathizer|The Sympathizer]] ## References, Quotes, Ideas ```dataview table file.mtime.year + "-" + file.mtime.month + "-" + file.mtime.day as Modified from [[ ]] and !outgoing([[ ]]) sort file.mtime desc ```