March book

Title: The Boat

Author: Nam Le

Location: Sue Ellyard's house

I'm the fifth reserve through Hornsby library, which means I'll have to buy the book, I fear.

There's a transcript of a Peter Mares ABC interview at:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2273652.htm

Blurb from Penguin is
The Boat will take you everywhere.
In 1979, Nam Le's family left Vietnam for Australia, an experience that inspires the first and last stories in The Boat. In between, however, Le's imagination lays claim to the world.
The Boat takes us from a tourist in Tehran to a teenage hit man in Columbia; from an aging New York artist to a boy coming of age in a small Victorian fishing town; from the city of Hiroshima just before the bomb is dropped to the haunting waste of the South China Sea in the wake of another war.
Each story uncovers a raw human truth. Each story is absorbing and fully realised as a novel. Together, the make up a collection of astonishing diversity and achievement.
'Nam Le is extraordinary, a writer who will be heard. The Boat will be read for as long as people read books. Its vision and its power are timeless.' - Mary Gaitskill
'Wonderful stories that snarl and pant cross our crazed world... and extraordinary performance. Nam Le is a heartbreaker, not easily forgotten.' - Junot Diaz
'A fearless new Australian voice that accepts no geographical limits; these are stories of leaping power and the most breathtaking grace and intimacy.' - Helen Garner