The Committed is Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s keenly awaited follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Sympathizer. A journey through the underworld of 1980s Paris, it shares the same narrator, a Vietnamese-French communist spy, as its predecessor and has drawn praise as ‘a treatise of global futurity in the aftermath of colonial conquest’ (Ocean Vuong) and ‘a deep, compelling and humorous portrait of how we are shaped by fictions others have for us’ (Laila Lalami). He speaks with Leah Jing McIntosh about a literary thriller spiked with absurdist humour that shines a forensic light on empire and capitalism.

Recorded for MWF in 2021.