A book of rare beauty: Ru is a lullaby of Vietnam and a love letter to a new homeland. Was Radio 4 Book at Bedtime.

Ru: In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream. As an adult, the waters become rough again: now a mother of two, she must learn to shape her love around the younger boy's autism. Moving seamlessly from past to present, from history to memory and back again, Ru is a book that celebrates life in all its wonder: its moments of beauty and sensuality, brutality and sorrow, comfort and comedy.

"Life is a struggle," runs a Vietnamese proverb, "in which sorrow leads to defeat." Thúy's fictionalised memoir adopts a similarly unsentimental attitude to a life of extremes. ... The accounts of escape and arrival are exciting, but Ru is more about observation and atmosphere ... Thúy's stories are poetic and powerful. - Guardian

"An elegant, lyrical flow of prose . . . It is a difficult, challenging and ultimately rewarding read from an author already at the top of her game." - Irish Examiner

"Striking" - Guardian

"Rendered in exquisite, unsentimental prose. Kim Thúy is a born storyteller, but she rewrites the traditional immigrant narrative in a completely new way, makes it whole and wondrous once more." - Jury Citation for the Gillier Prize Shortlist