The Sympathizer begins with a declaration by a nameless narrator: “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook...a man of two minds.” Told in first-person, the narrator addresses this story—his “confession”—to the Commandant, who is holding the narrator in a solitary confinement cell somewhere in the Commandant’s camp. The details of why or where the narrator is being held are unclear at this point.

The narrator’s story, as told to the Commandant, starts in April 1975 in South Vietnam, just before the fall of Saigon. The narrator is an “aide-de-camp and junior officer of intelligence” to the General, a high-ranking member of the Special Branch, which is a CIA-like intelligence organization of South Vietnam (5). The narrator, in spite of his high-ranking position in the Special Branch, is actually an undercover Communist spy, who has somehow infiltrated the primary hub of anti-Communist South Vietnamese intelligence. In addition to the narrator, the General is also advised by Claude, an American CIA member.

With the impending invasion by North Vietnam, Claude informs the General he can arrange to have ninety-two people evacuated from Saigon to Guam, a mere fraction of the family, staff, and others that need to leave.