PETE HIRST introduces a theatre company from Wakefield dedicated to the propagation of socialist perspectives on present British political realities
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Not sympathetic enough
DENNIS BROE puts into broader context The Sympathiser, a novel HBO series which attempts to insert more objectivity into the depiction of the US during the Vietnam war, its aftermath and its lingering mythologies
MEATY ROLES: Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr in The Sympathizer
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JENNY FARRELL reminds us that the US novelist, famed for pulp fiction and nature stories, was, by virtue of life experience, a committed revolutionary socialist
BRENT CUTLER recommends a sober examination of the real risks and true merits of nuclear energy, and an exposure of the capitalist system as an obstacle to human betterment
A deeply pleasing festive crime wave
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HBO’s The Sympathiser from the Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen opens with a quote: “All wars are fought twice, once on the battlefield and the second time in memory.”
It’s not simply memory that the book and the series are concerned with though; it’s “representation,” that is social memory refracted through in this case a hostile media which often exists to “correct” the sins and failures of bloody imperial overreach.
“On the battlefield,” Vietnam was lost by the US and its tiny number of — by the conclusion of the war — collaborators, although the cost was high with over one million Vietnamese killed for the crime of wanting to free their country from first French and then US domination.
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