Coping with shifting political tides can be hard to take even for the wisest man. For headmaster Percival Chen, a self-centered, self-made and womanizing aggrandizer with a gift for self-congratulatory ignorance, change can be downright earth-shattering.
In Vincent Lam's The Headmaster's Wager, the Chinese expatriate Chen must navigate the growing anti-foreign sentiment of war-torn 1960s Vietnam; a stranger in a stranger land, Chen still manages to make a fortune while staunchly adhering to his increasingly outdated pro-Chinese sentiments. His demons eventually come back to haunt him, however, as a misguided philosophical protest turns his son into a political prisoner and Chen turns to a prostitute for solace and comfort only to discover treachery and betrayal.
Though American readers may be familiar with the history of the communist takeover of China after the Second World War and the ultimate resolution of the Vietnam War, they may be less familiar with the role that Vietnam played as the "Gold Mountain" dream of poor Chinese journeymen who sought to plunder and reap its rich rewards. Lam's debut novel (after the short story collection Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures) is a fictionalized account of his own parents' and grandparents' family history--a well-researched effort resulting in a vivid, palpable and lyrical document evoking a forgotten segment of modern Vietnamese history. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer