OSG Book Club

We’re starting a new book: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Join our book club to listen to our volunteer Finn Jensen read to the group.

The OSG Book Club will meet every Tuesday at 7 PM starting March 15th. All are welcome, but please RSVP to recieve the Zoom link*. Note: it’s not mandatory to purchase the book since it will be read out loud in the group.

*Once you’ve signed up once, no need to sign up every week. We’ll automatically send you the zoom link weekly with a reminder.

About the book:

A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.