Creative Writing

Creative Writing:Prose Rocio Davis, chair, Yoonmee Chang, and Ed Lin The judges have unanimously decided on The Sympathizer as the winner of this year's award. We were impressed with the book's originality, its intelligent cross-genre moves, and its thoughtful meditation on what identity [End Page 466] and loyalties might mean in times of war and peace. Set in the postwar fallout between the U.S. and Vietnam, Nguyen's book cleverly weaves the threads of a refugee story with those of a spy novel, creating a remarkable hybrid text that requires us to think about where one's sympathies should lie in a world where characters' motives are as complex as the political situation they are in. As the novel engages the psychological process of its main character, an immigrant, soldier, and spy, readers are drawn into a life of intrigue, ambiguous morality, and violence. For the protagonist, the war has not really ended and his process of rebuilding a life across countries, through film reenactments and a return, becomes more complicated that he could have imagined. Nguyen's compelling prose, serious and humorous at the same time, is somehow confrontational, leading readers to rethink what we believe we might know about the past and one's commitments to oneself and country. Copyright © 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press

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