"The Sympathizer" won the Pulitzer Prize and several other book awards for portraying the multidimensional struggles of Vietnamese people who defected to America after the end of Vietnam's fall to Communism at the end of the Vietnam war. The novel has a great deal of merit for tell a story that a younger than 50 generation does not know much about (me included), and the writing is wonderful. I admire this book, but I do not really like it much. I struggled through every page, sentence by sentence being good, but I did not find myself engaged with the story at any moment. I trekked through the prose like almost like I was a soldier trudging through a jungle, looking for the next trap to ensnare me. I waited for that moment when the story would finally capture me, hold me hostage, and make it difficult for me to let go, but this moment never came. Instead I came out of the other end of the novel relieved to be finished, but a little disappointed that the excitement that I anticipated never really came. I am glad that I made it through the difficult journey, and I will continue to read Viet Thanh Nguyen's works because I feel like even though I was not excited about the novel, I feel like it is important to have read. He teaches about a story that most people, particularly American people don't know much about. For that and for the beauty of his writing, he deserves all of the acolytes he receives. I am glad I read "The Sympathizer" even though I didn't particularly like it.