Generally, I'm not a person who enjoys sequels, but this one hits it out of the park. Nguyen's writing is so witty and smart. I love that he takes his narrator to Paris in the 1970s where he gets immersed and enmeshed in a new sort of underworld - of refugees and exiles pushing narcotics, many of whom are Algerian. I love the philosophical rants about colonialism, Christianity, and communism, especially all of the greats who undergird his pontifications from Fanon to Cesaire to Adorno and Kristeva. Philosophy and English majors will get a kick out of how Nguyen references these writers. And I especially loved the allusion to Leila Khaled and wish there had been more linkages between anti-colonialism in Palestine and the Arab world to Vietnam. But all in all it's a brilliant read!