Kim Thúy

Kim Thuy (* 1968, Saigon, Vietnam ) is a Canadian writer French

Life

Kim Thuy spent her first ten years in Vietnam before with her ​​parents and two brothers as boat people fled to Canada in 1978 and settled in Montreal in the province of Quebec. Here Thuy began her studies at the Université de Montréal in the subjects of law ( degree in 1983 ), as well as in linguistics and translation, which she completed in 1990. She worked as a translator and attorney, was the restaurateur and restaurant critic for radio and television. Today Kim Thuy lives as a writer in French with her husband and two children in Montreal.

Her first book " Ru " (2009) - the title means in Vietnamese "Lullaby " and in French " brook " - was an international success and earned her numerous awards. In German it appeared under the title " The sound of strangers " in the translation of Andrea Alvermann and Brigitte Large Verlag Antje Kunstmann. In this associative told autobiographical work she describes her experiences as a child of a wealthy family in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, expulsion and flight, the horror in a Malaysian refugee camp and finally her arrival in Wonderland Canada, the then but it is not as wonderful proved. In a beautiful, sensual language and precious pictures, she is always compared with the two worlds, without bitterness and with a lot of humor.

In 2011 she published, together with the French- Slovak- Swiss author Pascal Janovjak "À toi": The two met one night in a hotel in Monaco, told each other at breakfast her story, and then they traveled to Montréal, he returned to Ramallah. The resulting work is the result of a literary lightning: an intense conversation about linguistic and cultural boundaries - over what constitutes the beauty of the world and the vulnerability of the people.

2013 appears her new book " Man" in their Canadian publishing " Free Expression ". It is the - also autobiographical fed - love story of a woman, first of the three women they have brought under sometimes adverse circumstances to the world, taken up and educated, and finally to the man she met in the Canadian snow.

How the publishing advertising formulated so pretty: " Man" describes the formative years of love, in "À toi" it comes to life, " Ru " tells the story of survival.

Awards

• 2010: The Governor General 's Award for French language fiction, Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie, Grand Prix littéraire de la relève Archambault, Grand Prix RTL - Lire and Grand Prix at the Book Fair of Montreal

Publications

• Ru. Éditions Libre Expression, Montreal 2009, ISBN 978-2-7648-0463-6. German: The sound of strangers. Translated by Andrea Alvermann and Brigitte Great. Verlag Antje Kunstmann, München 2010, ISBN 978-3-88897-679-7.