Plot
The novel continues the journey of the unnamed protagonist, a half-French, half-Vietnamese former communist spy, as he navigates exile in Paris and ideological conflict.
The novel follows the protagonist and his blood brother Bon as they arrive in France in the early 1980s, having escaped from a re-education camp in Vietnam at the end of the previous novel. Struggling to survive as refugees, they become entangled in the world of the French elite, drug trafficking, and political radicalism. The protagonist takes a job as a lackey for a drug-dealing Vietnamese mob boss while grappling with his fractured identity, the ghosts of war, and the contradictions of colonialism and capitalism.
Haunted by his past and suffering from addiction, he wrestles with questions of loyalty, ideology, and self-worth. As his circumstances spiral out of control, he is forced to confront both external dangers and his own moral compromises, leading to a darkly ironic meditation on power, exile, and the illusions of freedom.
Reception
The Committed received favorable reviews. According to Book Marks, the book received "positive" reviews based on 36 critic reviews with 19 being "rave" and 12 being "positive" and four being "mixed" and one being "pan". [4] [5] [6]
In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Nguyen is deft at balancing his hero's existential despair with the lurid glow of a crime saga." [7] Publishers Weekly , in its starred review, praised "the narrator’s hair-raising escapes, descriptions of the Boss's hokey bar, and thoughtful references to Fanon and Césaire." [8] The New York Times praised the first hundred pages of The Committed as "better than anything in the first novel," while regarding the second half as, "shaggy, shaggy, shaggy." [9]
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