Ru (novel)

Ru is a novel by Canadian novelist Kim Thúy, first published in French in 2009 by Montreal publisher Libre Expression. It was translated into English in 2012 by Sheila Fischman and published by Vintage Canada.

The novel tells the tale of a woman, An Tinh Nguyen, born in Saigon in 1968 during the Tet Offensive who immigrates to Canada with her family as a child.

The book flits between her childhood in Vietnam where she was born into a large and wealthy family, her time as a boat person when she left her country for a refugee camp in Malaysia, and her life as an early immigrant in Granby, Quebec.

The word ru has significance in both French and Vietnamese. In French the word means stream or flow of money, tears or blood. In Vietnamese the word means cradle or lullaby.

Ru won the Governor General's Award for French language fiction at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. The English edition, translated by Sheila Fischman, was published in 2012 by Random House Canada and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2012 Governor General's Award for French to English translation, and the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

The original French edition of the novel was selected for the 2014 edition of Le Combat des livres, where it was defended by author and physician Jean-François Chicoine. Its English translation was selected for the 2015 edition of Canada Reads by film critic and Toronto International Film Festival programmer Cameron Bailey, and won the competition on March 19, 2015.

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