Prejudice and racism
Although the unnamed spy considers it an honor to be invited to a work on a film by a Hollywood studio, he quickly learns that his employers are obviously very racist against him, and when an explosive goes off during a random moment nearly claiming his life, the spy realizes that he is the victim of racism. Not only that, he realizes he has been participating in a smear campaign against his own people; the film will damage public perception of Vietnamese people in America.
PTSD and mental illness
When it makes no sense for certain characters to find their way to the spy's whereabouts, sometimes we see them anyway, like General Bon, who is constantly entangled in the spies fate, though some of the stories seem very far-fetched indeed. So what to make of this? How is the reader to understand the random scenes of war-like violence that don't necessary make complete sense of the details? This is an instance of an unreliable narrator, and the effect of it is that the spy is paranoid and suffering from PTSD and untreated mental health issues.
The war in Vietnam
Although public opinion in America is far from the truth, only a few people know that in this novel. The Americans who are hired to make propagandist films against the Vietnamese, they know it, but they don't care. Otherwise, basically only the spy and General Bon know it. The problem is that in Vietnam the story is very different, so this is a serious issue in the protagonist's life, because he knows that Vietnam's version of events is very different than the United States—especially Hollywood.
