The much-anticipated sequel to Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, The Committed invites debate through its complex portrayal of political alignments, racial identity and, as the narrator admits, selfish flaws. It's richly layered with philosophical arguments and intellectual ideas, as well as a small but engrossing dose of criminal thrills.

The Committed follows its narrator, a Vietnamese refugee and former spy known only as "the Captain," and his "blood brother" and best friend, Bon, after their "reeducation" in a refugee camp at the end of The Sympathizer. The Captain and Bon are adjusting to life in 1980s Paris. Working at a restaurant and living among a burgeoning population of Vietnamese immigrants, the Captain ruminates on the differences between communism and global capitalism, going so far as to embrace capitalism in one of its most complicated forms, as a drug dealer. As unexpected as his new role is, the Captain embraces it with the same ease with which he embraced his ability to lie as a spy.

The Captain's close association with a French Vietnamese woman gives him access to a wealthier and more influential class of clientele for his newfound business enterprise. But at the same time, he finds himself drifting further from Bon, who is seeking more idealistic pursuits. As the Captain puts it, he finds himself in "a place where I could watch myself becoming more about me and me alone, the best justification there was for capitalism."

While it is helpful—and should be a prerequisite based on its Pulitzer Prize status alone—it isn't necessary to read The Sympathizer to become enmeshed in the pages of The Committed. Reminiscent of John Le Carré's deeply textured spy novels, The Committed proves Nguyen is no one-hit wonder when it comes to fine literature.

In this bated-breath follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer, Nguyen's eponymous protagonist lands in France after his unfortunate reeducation by a former best friend. He loves Paris and finds his groove with a bunch of left-wing intellectuals and politicians, but his predominant means of support—dealing drugs—has its drawbacks. And his two closest friends have polar-opposite worldviews.

The sequel to Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize–winning The Sympathizer is an exhilarating roller-coaster ride filled with violence, hidden identity, and meditations on whether the colonized can ever be free. The fractured, guilt-ridden narrator, a veteran of the South Vietnamese Army, where he was a mole for the communists, goes by his assumed name Vo Danh, which means "nameless." He has survived reeducation and a refugee camp and is now living in early 1980s Paris, along with his devoutly anti-communist "blood brother," Bon, who doesn't know he was a double agent. Vo Danh starts selling hashish for a Viet-Chinese drug lord called the Boss, whom he and Bon met in their refugee camp. The gig has him more vexed about the crime of capitalism than that of drug dealing, and he's not expecting a turf war. Indeed, he's chagrined to discover his rivals, French Arabs who share with him a legacy of colonization, want him dead. Meanwhile, there are opportunity for socializing, revenge, and reunions at the Vietnamese Union. The book works both as sequel and standalone, with Nguyen careful to fold in needed backstory, and the author's wordplay continues to scratch at the narrator's fractured sense of self ("I am not just one but two. Not just I but you. Not just me but we"). Pleasures abound, such as the narrator's hair-raising escapes, descriptions of the Boss's hokey bar ("This was the new and modern Orient, where opium was both cool and quaint, chic and cute, addictive and undemanding"), and thoughtful references to Fanon and Césaire. Nguyen continues to delight. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (Mar.)