The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir by Anh Do
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A story of settling down in Australia of a Vietnamese family.
On one hand, a story typical for thousands of Vietnamese families - extremely risky boat travel, refugee camp, very hard work to reach some level of stability in the foreign country.
On the other hand, it is not quite typical family.
Extremely entrepreneurial father, very talented children.
Anh Do spends over 2 hours a day on return travel to a good private school, on some occasions works till 3 am helping his mother with her sewing work, cannot afford all required school manuals and still ends school as a top student and is accepted to study Law at Sydney University.
He does not like his studies, again undertakes numerous jobs to repair family budget, plays rugby and at the end of studies if offered a good job by a renown company. And he rejects this offer.
As for the book. On one hand it is an exciting story. Story about hard work and great family love and mutual sacrifice. On the other hand... in my opinion it is not very well written book. It looks like the author tries to sell too much and included into the book too many irrelevant or just poorly written details.
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