Delights of Asia

Delights of Asia is a rundown and dirty Asian restaurant that the Boss uses as a front for his business. The name contains a sense of irony, as the restaurant is anything but delightful. This wry nomenclature marks the restaurant as a commentary on the absurd glamorization of the immigrant experience that takes place in western culture with some frequency. The restaurant is even held up against Parisian cuisine following a severe beating that The Sympathizer sustains, when Le Cao Boi takes him to eat pastries rather than the food in the restaurant. This setting shatters the bootstraps myth by implying that successful refugee stories are quite literally a front.

The Boss's Apartment

The apartment that the Boss dwells in has a view of the Eiffel Tower, a detail which is significant to the novel’s thematic interests, as the phallic and patriarchal nature of monuments...