Man — Kim Thuy

Following on the Giller Prize-nominated and Governor General's Literary Award-winning success of Ru, Kim Thy's latest novel is a triumph of poetic beauty and a moving meditation on how love and food are inextricably entwined. Mn has three mothers: the one who gives birth to her in wartime, the nun who plucks her from a vegetable garden, and her beloved Maman, who becomes a spy to survive. Seeking security for her grown daughter, Maman finds Mn a husband--a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur who lives in Montreal. Thrown into a new world, Mn discovers her natural talent as a chef. Gracefully she practices her art, with food as her medium. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body: they evoke memory and emotion, time and place, and even bring her customers to tears. Mn is a mystery--her name means "perfect fulfillment," yet she and her husband seem to drift along, respectfully and dutifully. But when she encounters a married chef in Paris, everything changes in the instant of a fleeting touch, and Mn discovers the all-encompassing obsession and ever-present dangers of a love affair. Full of indelible images of beauty, delicacy and quiet power, Mn is a novel that begs to be savoured for its language, its sensuousness and its love of life.