The Beauty of Humanity Movement

'Compelling... The most moving, romantic, funny book I have read in a long time.' Daily MailCamilla Gibb returns to form with the stunningly evocative The Beauty of Humanity Movement, a novel of contemporary Vietnam, momentous change, and families defined not by blood, but by the heart. They say that the history of Vietnam can be found in a bowl of pho, and from his handcart- kitchen, Old Man Hu'ng makes the best in all Hanoi. But a striking young Vietnamese-American woman - Maggie Ly - wants more from him than a bowl of soup.Just a young girl when Saigon fell, Maggie fled with her mother to America, leaving her dissident father to an uncertain fate. Now in her thirties, she has returned to the country of her birth in the hopes of discovering what became of him - and Hu'ng may hold the key.Maggie's guide through Hanoi is Tu, a street-smart young man as fluent in the ways of Western culture as he is governed by his own. Together the old man, the returning daughter, and the young entrepreneur become unlikely friends and allies; and as their stories gradually unfurl, each adds a new layer to another largely untold story: the story of modern Vietnam.

Tu' is a young tour guide working in Hanoi. As he leads bands of Westerners on 'war tours' through the scarred landscape of Vietnam, he wonders what it is that his clients see - and what they miss entirely. Maggie is Vietnamese by birth but has lived most her life in the U.S. Returning to her homeland, she sifts through history for clues as to the fate of her dissident father. Witness to both their stories, Old Man Hung has lived through decades of political upheaval. But Hung has found a way to provide hope in his waterside community: The Beauty of Humanity Movement.The Beauty of Humanity Movement is a keenly observed and skillfully wrought novel about the reverberation of conflict through generations, the enduring legacy of art, and the redemption, and renewal, of long-lost love.