The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is a war novel, a spy novel—but don’t call it an immigrant novel. By SCU The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen review – a bold, artful debut The book won the Pulitzer, and in 2017 Nguyen was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant and published a collection of stories, The Refugees. The distinction between immigrant and refugee was a central part of Nguyen’s talk and reading on campus last fall. “We hated immigrants before, some of us hate immigrants now, but the point is that immigrants are part of the American mythology,” Nguyen said. “They’re part of the…