Abstract: The cosmopolitan ethics raised by American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah and the philosophy of ironism advocated by Richard Rory share a similar theoretical basis, both of which take individual as the ultimate concern. By means of the investigation of the “self-other” relations, they afford an insightful perspective to deal with trans-ethnical and trans-national issues as well as the solidarity of human race. In the novel The Sympathizer, which has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016, the author Viet Thanh Nguyen, a refugee of the Vietnam War settling in the United States in 1975, presents an alternative war narrative by virtue of cosmopolitan irony. Through the lens of the protagonist, “a man of two faces”, and the account of his wartime service as well as his legendary experience in the United States, the novel interrogates both Vietnam and the United States as well as their respective roles in the Vietnam War. Moreover, the novel also exemplifies the mechanism of cosmopolitan dialogue and ironist mentality in terms of self-other interactions, in which the ethics of identity plays an important role and further contributes to the actualization of a cosmopolitan liberal utopia.

Key words: The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, cosmopolitanism, ironism