Support for this podcast and the following message come from PWC,

pairing the right tech with the right solutions to help you gain a competitive edge.

Re-imagine operations, fuel innovation, and detect risks,

human lead, and tech-powered.

It's all part of the new equation from PWC.

This is Fresh Air. I'm David Beenkule.

I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. I was cursed to see every issue from both sides.

The sympathizer, a new series on HBO and Max, is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Vietton Nguyen.

His book is set during and just after the war in Vietnam.

It's told in the form of a forced confession, written by a spy who worked

for the North Vietnamese going undercover as an aid to a South Vietnamese general and his staff. It appears that part of his crime is

sympathizing with the suffering on both sides. That sympathy is, in part, a function of

his own divided self. The character's mother grew up in the north of Vietnam.

His father was a French colonialist in Vietnam. Let's hear a clip from the series.

The narrator, the sympathizer of the title,

has fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon

and arrived in the United States.

This is his second time in the country

after attending college in the States 10 years earlier.

He's visiting his old campus and is interviewed by a student journalist who asks him if during the war he appreciated the support of student anti-war activists.

Not so much.

We were all marching, you know, we were on your side.

...