Book - BookDetective

Name: The Book of Salt

Author: Monique Truong
Year: 2003
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Historical fiction, Award winners
Cultures: France, Asia

Purchase/reserch links:

ISBNs:
9780618446889
0618446885

Binh, a Vietnamese cook, flees Saigon in 1929, disgracing his family to serve as a galley hand at sea. The taunts of his now-deceased father ringing in his ears, Binh answers an ad for a live-in cook at a Parisian household, and soon finds himself employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

Toklas and Stein hold court in their literary salon, for which the devoted yet acerbic Binh serves as chef, and as a keen observer of his "Mesdames" and their distinguished guests. But when the enigmatic literary ladies decide to journey back to America, Binh is faced with a monumental choice: will he, the self-imposed "exile," accompany them to yet another new country, return to his native Vietnam, or make Paris his home?