The Headmaster's Wager
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English school in Saigon. He is also a bon vivant, a compulsive gambler and an incorrigible womanizer. He is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of the Chen Academy. He is fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, and quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided country. He devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls around him, choosing instead to read the faces of his opponents at high-stakes mahjong tables. But when his only son gets in trouble with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival faces the limits of his connections and wealth and is forced to send him away. In the loneliness that follows, Percival finds solace in Jacqueline, a beautiful woman of mixed French and Vietnamese heritage, and Laing Jai, a son born to them on the eve of the Tet offensive. Percival's new-found happiness is precarious, and as the complexities of war encroach further and further into his world, he must confront the tragedy of all he has refused to see.
Blessed with intriguingly flawed characters moving through a richly drawn historical and physical landscape, The Headmaster's Wager is a riveting story of love, betrayal and sacrifice.
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Vincent Lam. (2018). The Headmaster's Wager. Unabridged Doubleday Canada.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Vincent Lam. 2018. The Headmaster's Wager. Doubleday Canada.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Vincent Lam, The Headmaster's Wager. Doubleday Canada, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)Vincent Lam. The Headmaster's Wager. Unabridged Doubleday Canada, 2018.
Library | Owned | Available |
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Anne Arundel County Public Library | 1 | 1 |
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- bioText: DR. VINCENT LAM is from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam, and was born in Canada. Dr. Lam did his medical training and is an emergency physician in Toronto. He is a Lecturer with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. He has also worked in international air evacuation and expedition medicine on Arctic and Antarctic ships. Dr. Lam's first book, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has recently been adapted for television and broadcast on HBO Canada. Dr. Lam co-authored The Flu Pandemic and You, a non-fiction guide to influenza pandemics.
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- From Giller Prize winner, internationally acclaimed, and bestselling author Vincent Lam comes a superbly crafted, highly suspenseful, and deeply affecting novel set against the turmoil of the Vietnam War.
Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English school in Saigon. He is also a bon vivant, a compulsive gambler and an incorrigible womanizer. He is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of the Chen Academy. He is fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, and quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided country. He devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls around him, choosing instead to read the faces of his opponents at high-stakes mahjong tables. But when his only son gets in trouble with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival faces the limits of his connections and wealth and is forced to send him away. In the loneliness that follows, Percival finds solace in Jacqueline, a beautiful woman of mixed French and Vietnamese heritage, and Laing Jai, a son born to them on the eve of the Tet offensive. Percival's new-found happiness is precarious, and as the complexities of war encroach further and further into his world, he must confront the tragedy of all he has refused to see.
Blessed with intriguingly flawed characters moving through a richly drawn historical and physical landscape, The Headmaster's Wager is a riveting story of love, betrayal and sacrifice. - reviews
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"[A] sumptuously plotted first novel... Lam goes for the jugular, combining an operatic love story...with evocations of Vietnam's occupation by the Japanese and the later horrors of the Vietcong's persecution of the city of Hue... His most provocative character is the shadowy Teacher Mak, Chen's longtime aide-de-camp, whose shifting masks of comrade and adversary potently embody the intricate survival tactics required of aliens afloat in a country of fractured allegiances."
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- source: Shelf Awareness
- content: "A vivid, palpable and lyrical document evoking a forgotten segment of modern Vietnamese history. An unforgettable portrait of love, betrayal and sacrifice."
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- source: Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- content: "A masterfully paced exploration of a world convulsed by war, wherein faith and reason no longer hold sway...Lam marshals his characters with humor suspense, and tenderness as the fall of Saigon looms...[and] depicts a world caught in an implacable cycle of violence, leavened only by the grace of a father's love."
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- source: Library Journal (starred review)
- content: "Lam, winner of the Scotiabank Giller prize for his short story collection Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures, has created a tour de force that reaches from the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong to the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975."
- premium: False
- source: San Antonio Express
- content: "With The Headmaster's Wager, Lam has produced a grand, sweeping saga that vividly re-creates 40 crucial years of Asian history from Japanese invasion to the "freeing" of South Vietnam."
- premium: False
- source: Booklist
- content: "In his first novel, Lam provides both an unusual perspective on the Vietnam War and a sweeping story of one man's brutal education in realpolitik."
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- source: Kirkus
- content: "Lam writes tellingly about intrigue, political collusion and the clash of cultures."
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- source: Janice Y.K. Lee, author of the New York Times bestseller The Piano Teacher
- content: "A first novel of astonishing force, craft and beauty, The Headmaster's Wager conjures up a dizzyingly evocative wartime Saigon in the story of Percival Chen, a Chinese schoolmaster in Vietnam. This extraordinary book made me weep. Read it."
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- source: Entertainment Weekly
- content: "Set in 1960s Saigon, this debut follows a haughty, corrupt school official whose grave mistake makes him a target of the Vietcong."
- premium: False
- source: The Globe and Mail
- content: "Hugely impressive...powerful and engrossing...The Headmaster's Wager has the makings of a masterpiece."
- premium: False
- source: The Toronto Star
- content: "A novel of many twists and turns, full of people who aren't what they appear to be...Lam has created a hypnotically tragic tale, epic in scope."
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- source: The Montreal Gazette
- content: "It's [the] street-level view of a story we're more accustomed to viewing in panorama that ultimately makes Lam's novel so effective and affecting. In stages so subtle they're scarcely noticeable until he's got you fully in his grip, Lam combines elements of historical fiction, political thriller and domestic drama to present one of the 20th century's defining stories in a whole new way."
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Starred review from July 2, 2012
Lam’s latest (after Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures) is a masterfully paced exploration of a world convulsed by war, wherein faith and reason no longer hold sway. Percival Chen, an affluent Chinese English instructor in late 1960s Saigon, is determined to escape the politics of war-torn Vietnam, profiting from the sidelines instead. He instructs his son, Dai Jai, to remain faithful only to their Chinese heritage, not realizing that even this allegiance has become a deadly liability. Obeying his father’s edict, Dai Jai is arrested by Vietnamese authorities, and Percival exhausts his shady connections in his attempts to rescue Dai Jai from the brutality of the police. Meanwhile, Percival falls in love with Jacqueline—a mixed-race prostitute with ulterior motives—despite the objections of his loyal friend Mak, a man embroiled in his own mysterious affairs. Lam marshals his characters with humor, suspense, and tenderness as the fall of Saigon looms. Even as Percival navigates the minefield of shifting ideologies, treachery, and paranoia—incurring one inconceivable cost upon another—his devotion suffuses every page. Lam depicts a world caught in an implacable cycle of violence, leavened only by the grace of a father’s love. Agent: Christy Fletcher.
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- From Giller Prize winner, internationally acclaimed, and bestselling author Vincent Lam comes a superbly crafted, highly suspenseful, and deeply affecting novel set against the turmoil of the Vietnam War.
Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English school in Saigon. He is also a bon vivant, a compulsive gambler and an incorrigible womanizer. He is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of the Chen Academy. He is fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, and quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided country. He devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls around him, choosing instead to read the faces of his opponents at high-stakes mahjong tables. But when his only son gets in trouble with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival faces the limits of his connections and wealth and is forced to send him away. In the loneliness that follows,... - sortTitle
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