AustLit

'In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families set out on perilous journeys in rickety boats to escape communist rule and seek out a better life. Kim Huynh's family was one of them.

'In this unique memoir, Kim traces his parents' precarious lives from their poor villages in central and south Vietnam, through relative affluence in Saigon, to their harrowing experiences after the American withdrawal and the fall of Saigon in 1975. As Kim explores his parents' stories, he unveils the tragedy, oppression and inner strength of ordinary people struggling to survive in a country beset by colonisation and ravaged by war.' (Publisher's blurb)