If you liked
Books like The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer is Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize winner — a communist double agent's first-person confession running from the April 1975 fall of Saigon through a Los Angeles refugee community and back into Vietnam. The voice is one of the most carefully constructed in contemporary American literary fiction. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeousby Ocean Vuong
“On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 2019 review. A young Vietnamese-American man writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his Hartford childhood and the OxyContin crisis that takes his first love. Vuong's debut novel.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
Lincoln in the Bardoby George Saunders
“Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 2017 review. Abraham Lincoln's eleven-year-old son Willie dies and Lincoln returns to the Georgetown cemetery. The Bardo is populated by the cemetery's reluctant dead. Man Booker Prize 2017.”
The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead
“The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 2016 review. Cora, a slave on a Georgia plantation, escapes north via an actual underground railroad, a literalized version of the metaphor. Pulitzer Prize 2017 and the National Book Award winner that defined the contemporary Black literary moment.”
Jamesby Percival Everett
“James by Percival Everett 2024 review. A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, in his own voice. The most important American novel of 2024 and the right Everett entry point.”
Solitoby Javier Zamora
“Solito by Javier Zamora 2022 review. The 1999 migration of a nine-year-old Salvadoran boy on foot and by sea across two months. The canonical contemporary memoir of unaccompanied minor migration to the United States.”
FAQ
Common questions about The Sympathizer read-alikes
- What is the closest match for The Sympathizer?
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Same Vietnamese-American interrogation of how the war and its aftermath have been carried forward into the American present. Vuong writes in a poetic register and Nguyen in a confessional register but the project is in the same family.
- I want more Viet Thanh Nguyen.
- The Refugees (2017, short story collection) and The Committed (2021, the direct Sympathizer sequel) are the obvious next reads. The Refugees is the gentler entry; The Committed is more politically ambitious than the first novel.
- I want another novel about war from the side it was fought against.
- The Underground Railroad does it for American chattel slavery. James does it for American racial violence in a different register. Lincoln in the Bardo does it for the American Civil War at the scale of one bereaved father. All three are doing related historical-literary work.
- I want a novel that uses confession structurally.
- Yellowface (R. F. Kuang) is the closest contemporary match — a sustained first-person confession from inside the head of an unreliable narrator. Solito (Javier Zamora's memoir) is the non-fiction equivalent at the level of a nine-year-old's voice.
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