Photo Credit: Benoit Levac
Canadian writer Kim Thúy fled war-torn Vietnam in 1978 at 10 years old, and her sparse debut novel Ru, which received the Governor General’s Literary Award and was longlisted for Canada Reads 2015, tells a dynamic story that, while not autobiographical, parallels many of the events in Thúy’s own life, as it flows back and forth in time from a child’s upper-class upbringing in Saigon to a forced emigration to Quebec. Written in short vignettes, this slim novel is aptly named, for in Vietnamese, ru is a lullaby; in French, a stream.
In her second novel, Mãn, Thúy returns to the distant landscape of war through her meditative parable of how one family’s safe reality can be woefully inadequate at times. In the beginning, it appears as if protagonist Mãn, who fled Vietnam as a child, has settled into a comfortable existence in Canada where she enjoys cooking traditional Vietnamese cuisine in her husband’s restaurant and serving as a dutiful wife. It is only after a trip to Europe that the woman reconsiders the identity she has created for herself. Told with a moving minimalist style, Mãn is a very tender love story.
Thúy’s novels were originally published in French and translated into English by Sheila Fischman.
Boswell Book Company is pleased to welcome her to the store at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 8. This free event is co-sponsored by Alliance Française de Milwaukee.
