The Book of Salt

The Book of Salt is a 2003 novel by Monique Truong. Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the novel focuses on Binh, a young, gay Vietnamese cook in French-colonized Vietnam. Binh flees Saigon, and after spending time at sea as a cook, he lands in Paris and eventually answers an ad for a position in the household of Gertrude Stein and her lover/companion, Alice B. Toklas.

Binh navigates the limitations of colonialism while exploring his emerging identity during a time of unusual freedom and creativity in Paris when Stein’s home became a magnet for luminaries of the Lost Generation, a famed group of writers and artists that included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and EE Cummings. Binh observes the characters who come and go while cooking for Stein, Toklas, and their guests. Throughout the book, Binh struggles with emotions, imagining arguments with his father and trying to manage his habits of self-mutilation and heavy drinking.

Truong based her fictionalized account of the famous literary couple on a passage in the real-life Toklas’s cookbook that mentions two Indochinese cooks, one of whom answered a classified ad for the position. The novel explores themes of Racial and Sexual Identity, Language as a Bond and Barrier, and The Power of Stories.

Content warning: This guide contains discussions of self-harm, substance abuse, and anti-gay bias that are present in the source text.

Plot Summary

Binh—a pseudonym, since we never learn the character’s real name—has had to escape Vietnam due to his affair with a French chef. Binh’s sexual orientation does not precipitate his dismissal from the Governor-General’s household, but the impropriety of the affair does: The affair was interracial and crossed class lines. However, the same-sex nature of the relationship causes Binh’s father to disown him and throw him out. Binh grapples with his cruel father’s taunts in imagined conversations between himself and “the Old Man.” His long-suffering, loving mother, who shares a special bond with Binh, gives him a red pouch of money before he leaves.

In Paris, Binh meets a mysterious man on a bridge—this turns out to be the young Ho Chi Minh. The desire to see the enigmatic Minh once more inspires Binh to stay in Paris.

After getting a job in the Stein household, Binh falls in love with Dr. Marcus Lattimore, one of their many regular visitors. Lattimore is a mixed-race American who speaks both English and French and passes for white most of the time. He is a fake doctor, who tells people about their health by looking at the irises of their eyes. Lattimore coerces Binh to steal one of Stein’s many manuscripts, which are stored in a cabinet, by promising to have a photo taken together. The notebook Binh takes is titled The Book of Salt, and Lattimore tells him that it is about Binh.

Binh has the opportunity to go to America with his employers, who relish the upcoming experience of being treated like celebrities. Before they leave, Binh receives a letter from his eldest brother, Anh Minh, a sous-chef in the Governor-General's home. Anh Minh informs Binh that their father is dying and that their mother has already passed away. Anh Minh urges Binh to return home to see their father. Binh must decide whether to return to Vietnam or stay in Paris, and he realizes that he will not accompany Stein and Toklas to America.