A fiftieth anniversary review in The Guardian called Col. Sun "the most repellant racial caricature of all, a descendant of Fu Manchu and other fiendish orientals, noting that "Amis channels Fleming . . . as a connoisseur of ethnicities." The review notes that "Amis, by March 1968, had already made public his Damascene conversion from left to right, and signed a group letter to the Times titled Backing for US Policies in Vietnam."
