A few days ago I picked up Vincent Lam’s debut novel, The Headmaster’s Wager (Random House, 2012), and have only come up for air now that I’ve finished it. Although 400+ pages, it’s thrilling until the very last word.
The story takes place mostly during the Vietnam War in the Cholon (Chinatown) district near Saigon. Percival Chen is the headmaster of an English language institute that trains translators and interpreters for Americans in South Vietnam. But before Chen settled in Saigon as a teenager, he spent his early years in Shantou, China. His father established a lucrative rice business in Vietnam and funded Percival’s high school education in Hong Kong.
As luck would have it, Percival graduated high school just before Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in 1941. He and his high school crush, a shipping heiress named Cecilia, married so that Percival could take Cecilia to the more peaceful Saigon. In Vietnam they went to live with Percival’s father.
Life in Saigon was a tad more stable than in war-ravaged Hong Kong. Nonetheless, in Vietnam Percival witnessed brutal murders at the hands of the Japanese Kempeitai. It was during this time that he met Mr. Mak, who would become Percival’s right-hand man.
Cecilia divorced Percival several years after Dien Bien Phu, when their only son was eight. As the American involvement heated up, Percival found himself in massive debt, and against the advice of Mak, he joined a high-stakes mahjong game that would forever change his and his family’s lives.
What follows is a haunting story of love and betrayal. Lam brilliantly weaves the modern histories of Vietnam and China into his story. I felt like I was with the Chen family as they figured out what was going on during China’s Cultural Revolution. I found his descriptions of the years leading up to the Fall of Saigon–and what happened afterward–to be tense and vivid. He brings the reader right into the corruption and chaos of the times.
Lam’s own background is fascinating. He was born in Canada and comes from a Chinese family who had lived in Vietnam. But he’s not just a fabulous writer; he also practices emergency medicine in Toronto! To read more about Vincent Lam, check out his website at www.vincentlam.ca.
Nice Review, I am reading it now for a book blog tour. He’s writing is tight, and pulls you in. It is amazing.
I would like to comment to the person who said, Vietnam was not a war, but a conflict. It depends who you talk to. To most of us that lived in the 60’s. I was a young girl, but later worked with VA vets, I was a nurse. It is offending, these men sacrificed, and most died. To someone that says it was not a war, just think about how the vets felt. It was a terrible conflicting time. But they sacrificed themselves. To me, and most people it was a WAR! Most of them came home scared in some way, with PTSD, traumatized, or lost arms and legs.
I meant the Vietnam War with the US, which wasn’t really a war. Not to be confused, of course, with the war between VN and China. Too many wars!
I thought the Cultural Revolution was the disaster most spoken about post-1949 because people just blame the Gang of Four. At least that’s what I read in Great Leap Forward literature. Not that I should believe everything I read!!
People are only just starting to talk about the Great Leap Forward because everyone involved is dead… the Cultural Revolution’s still lurking around, as a lot of the people in positions of power got there through their involvement in it.
So no one’s really willing to talk about the Cultural Revolution, in case they dig up old problems. My wife’s parents lived through it, and won’t even admit it happened, in case someone comes and takes them away, too… because so many people just disappeared, never to return, their families are too traumatised to even think about it.
The Cultural Revolution’s still kept fairly quiet, the war with Vietnam doesn’t get a mention… and the relationship between Vietnam and China at the moment is rather tense.
Something about a couple of rocks in a sea somewhere.
Sounds great – and unlikely to ever hit bookstores around these parts… more’s the pity.
You never know! If anything, Vietnam comes out as the culprit, not China. It’s a story of overseas Chinese who still feel connected to the motherland. The Cultural Revolution seems to be the only tragic post-1949 period that is kosher to talk about in China, right? So this book could make it out your way!