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The
2005 Award
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The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
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Nominated by:
Publisher
of Nominated Editions:
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| the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors |
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ABOUT
THE BOOK
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| In
Paris, 1934, Bính has accompanied his employers, Gertrude Stein and
Alice B. Toklas, to the train station for their departure to America. His
own destination is unclear: will he go with "the Steins," stay
in France, or return to his native Vietnam? Bính has fled his homeland
in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his
self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the live-in cook at
the famous apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus. Before Bính's decision is revealed, his mesmerizing narrative catapults us back to his youth in French-colonized Vietnam, his years as a galley hand at sea, and his days turning out fragrant repasts for the doyennes of the Lost Generation. Bính knows far more than the contents of the Steins' pantry: he knows their routines and intimacies, their manipulations and follies. With wry insight, he views Stein and Toklas ensconced in rueful domesticity. But is Bính's account reliable? A lost soul, he is a late-night habitué of the Paris demimonde, an exile and an alien, a man of musings and memories, and, possibly, lies. Love is the prize that has eluded him, from his family to the men he has sought out in his far-flung journeys, often at his peril |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
| Monique
Truong was born in Saigon in 1968 and moved to the United States at
age six. She graduated from Yale University and the Columbia University
School of Law, going on to specialize in intellectual property. Truong co-edited
the anthology Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose.
Her first novel, The Book of Salt, has been awarded the 2003 Bard
Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award,
and the Young Lions Fiction Award, among other honours. Granting Truong
an Award of Excellence, the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco
State University called her "a pioneer in the field, as an academic,
an advocate, and an artist." She was awarded a Lannon Foundation Writing
Residency in 2001. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York. |
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