Em

Finalist of the New Academy Prize in Literature

Finalist Scotiabank Giller Prize

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Emma-Jade & Louis are born into the havoc of the Vietnam War. Orphaned, saved & cared for by adults coping with the chaos of Saigon in free-fall, they become children of the Vietnamese diaspora. Em is not a romance in any usual sense of the word, but it is a word whose homonym—aimer, to love—resonates on every page, a book powered by love in the larger sense. A portrait of Vietnamese identity emerges that is wholly remarkable, honed in wartime violence that borders on genocide, & then by the ingenuity, sheer grit & intelligence of Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnamese-Canadians & other Vietnamese former refugees who go on to build some of the most powerful small business empires in the world. 

Em is a poetic story steeped in history, about those most impacted by the violence & their later accomplishments. In many ways, Em is perhaps Kim Thúy's most personal book, the one in which she trusts her readers enough to share with them not only the pervasive love she feels but also the rage & the horror at what she & so many other children of the Vietnam War had to live through. 

Written in Kim Thúy's trademark style, near to prose poetry, Em reveals her fascination with connection. Through the linked destinies of characters connected by birth & destiny, the novel zigzags between the rubber plantations of Indochina; daily life in Saigon during the war as people find ways to survive & help each other; Operation Babylift, which evacuated thousands of biracial orphans from Saigon in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War; & today's global nail polish & nail salon industry, largely driven by former Vietnamese refugees--& everything in between. Here are human lives shaped both by unspeakable