Binh is the novel’s protagonist. He is a Vietnamese man in his twenties living in Paris and working as a cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. His life is complicated by his sexuality—he is gay—and the constraints of colonialism. He is the fourth son of his father, whom he refers to mostly as The Old Man, and his mother, who is trapped in a loveless marriage. Binh has a poetic narrative voice, but due to his limited French and English, he cannot fully communicate with most of the novel’s other characters. He seems content to live quietly, yet struggles to find peace, as evidenced by his habit of cutting himself and overindulging in alcohol.

Binh dreams of true love and his own scholar-prince, a figure prominent in the folk tales and myths his mother shares with him while teaching him in her kitchen. Binh seems to forever fight against his father’s cruel judgments and voice, which follow him to Paris, even when his father is absent. Binh finds some solace in Stein and Toklas’s kitchen, knowing that there he can impress and express himself as he can nowhere else.