Ru by Kim Thúy

Awarded the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award for French fiction, this autobiographical work, now translated into English, examines how concepts of possession and self are shaped amid impermanence. Fragmented prose recounts Kim Thúy’s youth in Saigon, her flight from Communism to Quebec and her eventual return to Vietnam. This is a story of how sharply different cultures and lives can be grafted onto one another to form a new whole.

Ru, Kim Thúy, $25.