The Book of Salt (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Monique Truong
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: From the 1920’s to 1934
- Setting: Saigon; Paris; and Bilignin, France
- Principal Characters: Binh, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Minh, Bão, Nguyên Ái Quôc, Marcus Lattimore, Blériot
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction, Novel
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Colonialism, France or French people, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Authors or writers, Exile or expatriates, Literature, Class consciousness, Paris, 1920’s, 1930’s, Lesbianism or lesbians, Women, Domestic work or workers, Servants, Cookery or cooks, Indochina, Vietnam or Vietnamese people
- Locales: Paris, France, Saigon, Vietnam
Monique Truong’s first novel, The Book of Salt, is a remarkably inventive fictional account of a Vietnamese cook whom Truong appropriated from several pages of the celebrated expatriate American writer Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. It seems that Truong, a Vietnamese American, was browsing through The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954) when, in the chapter titled “Servants in France,” she came across Toklas’s account of two Vietnamese who had worked for the Gertrude Stein ménage. Toklas’s account of these Vietnamese can be found between her recipes...
[The entire page is 2050 words long]
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