The Headmaster's Wager (Hardcover) by Vincent Lam

from zoe.r2005

The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam is a great page turner. The story of Percival Chen, an expatriate Chinese, the headmaster of the best English academy in Viet Name, is fascinating. The protagonist is well developed with many characteristics, a dutiful son and loving father, an educator who b...

from JohnHastie

You may remember Vincent Lam from his well-reviewed collection a few years back called Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures. His debut novel, THE HEADMASTER'S WAGER, is a quietly astounding work of fiction that deserves as wide a readership as it can get. The majority of the novel takes plac...

from whitreidtan

Percival Chen is the Chinese headmaster of an English school in Saigon. He was forced to leave his beloved China when the Japanese invaded in the 1930's and he chose to flee to Vietnam where there were rumors of abundance despite the wartime austerity elsewhere in Asia and because his own father ...

from eachurch

Vincent Lam's masterful story about the Chinese experience in Vietnam from 1966 to 1975 is both an exploration of the dangers of nationalism and a testimony to the power of love. It captures how difficult it is to know how political/world events are going to end and what we can do to protect ours...

from SamSattler

Almost exactly five years ago, I was introduced to Victor Lam's writing through his short story collection, Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures. That twelve-story collection, featuring four Canadian medical students in various combinations, reads very much like a novel in itself. Now, however...