Canadian author Camilla Gibb's latest novel, The Beauty of Humanity Movement, is set in present-day Vietnam. (George Whiteside/Random House of Canada) Camilla Gibb is a trouper. Seated in her publisher’s office in the midst of a long day of interviews, she’s caressing her belly, and with good reason. The acclaimed Toronto novelist is due to give birth to her first child in three weeks, though you’d never know it from the energy and focus she brings to our discussion.

Making only passing reference to her pregnancy, Gibb would much rather chat about the other creation she’s bringing into the world — a gripping new novel entitled The Beauty of Humanity Movement. The book is set in bustling present-day Hanoi, with flashbacks to more tumultuous years in Vietnam’s history.

The book’s genesis is nearly as spellbinding as the novel itself.

“I was inspired by people who exist,” Gibb says. “In the first case, a young tour guide I met in Hanoi – this was in 2007. I’d gone there on vacation, I wasn’t looking for inspiration, I was looking for a holiday, and I met this really articulate, interesting, quite serious young man.”

'As soon as you get to Vietnam, it’s immediately obvious that the population is so young. There’s this entrepreneurial spirit and there are all these kind of opportunities in terms of this new economy. They’re embracing it wholeheartedly, and they want their MTV.'

—Camilla Gibb

This fellow, Phoung, inadvertently planted the seeds for fiction during a discussion of pho, the fragrant noodle broth that serves as breakfast in Vietnam. Phoung explained that Hanoi’s best noodles were prepared by an aging man, a “subversive” pho seller without a shop, who managed to dodge police each morning and dole out soup from the back of a roving cart.

Though Gibb never ended up meeting this elusive chef, she explains, “I found my way to him, but it was through writing him into existence.” The novel’s central character is Old Man Hung, who begins each day serving up noodles to loyal customers at on-the-fly locations. A chance meeting with Maggie Ly, a Vietnamese-American seeking clues about her father’s past, prompts Hung to dig deep into his failing memory, where he revisits a lost love, the restaurant where he first learned his craft and the revolutionary artists and poets who made up the Beauty of Humanity Movement.

Hung provides a look back into Vietnam’s past, while a 22-year-old tour guide named Tu offers readers a glimpse into the country’s current era of economic freedom. It was this vibrant, new Vietnam that most surprised Gibb during her fateful vacation.

“It’s impossible to approach Vietnam without a kind of awareness and narrative about the war and associations and stereotypes,” she says. “And then as soon as you get to Vietnam, it’s immediately obvious that the population is so young, the war happened a long time before they were born, there’s this entrepreneurial spirit and there are all these kind of opportunities in terms of this new economy. They’re embracing it wholeheartedly, and they want their MTV.”

The novel’s most amusing passages involve Tu and his best friend, Phoung, who worship Bill Clinton, covet Nike Air Jordans and dream of performing on Vietnam Idol. The enterprising duo earns cash by guiding earnest Canadian travellers through Hanoi and delivering sombre “war tours ” to guilt-ridden American veterans. This latter device allows Gibb to deliver some sly political observations.

(Random House of Canada) “I understand the need for the war tour, which is [Americans] being haunted for so long, and wanting to make reparations, and wanting to connect in some way and have that catharsis and forgiveness, but it’s got nothing to do with Vietnam, and everything to do with America,” she explains. “You’re buying something totally produced for you to reinforce your romantic notions about this country.”

Gibb speaks protectively and with great insight about Vietnam, a place she’s grown to love. Before becoming a novelist, she earned a PhD in social anthropology, and the training informed her experience in the country, where she forged a lasting friendship with Phoung, explored shantytowns and Hanoi's Old Quarter and even enrolled in a cooking class (a pursuit she laughingly dismisses as “very touristy”). At the end of her travels, Gibb had the impression that the reason the country has been able to weather so many hardships is its “fierce” spirit, as well as a set of core values shared by everyone — young and old, capitalist and Communist.

“I think whatever’s happening on the surface, there’s this foundation. It’s like bedrock,” Gibb notes. “There is an integrity and a clarity about where your priorities lie, and that is first and foremost to family.”

For all its expert recreations of Vietnam history, The Beauty of Humanity Movement is a family story. Tu and Old Man Hung share a bond that provides the novel’s most moving passages, as the elder grows increasingly reliant on the young man he regards as a grandson; meanwhile, Tu strives to become a man who is deserving of Hung’s respect. The characters join forces to help Maggie Ly.

Gibb blends clean, precise language and vivid sensory descriptions to make something rich and satisfying – not unlike the pho that is a motif throughout the book. In fact, listening to Gibb describe the broth that sparked the story provides as good a summary as any for The Beauty of Humanity Movement.

“My exposure to the soup, beyond eating it, was beginning to talk to Phoung about, ‘OK, well what makes a good soup? And how do you distinguish?’ And his passion about it. And then what it represents, in terms of kind of the regionalism, and the purity that they insist upon in Hanoi, and the subtleties of difference throughout the country. It becomes much more than soup. It becomes politics in a bowl.”

The Beauty of Humanity Movement is in stores now.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBC News.