Vincent Lam (1)

Many years ago I was chatting with an accountant friend who was of Chinese heritage but who grew up in Indonesia. We were discussing racial stereotypes in the east and in the west. I remember his comment that "The Chinese are the Jews of the East." His point was that outside of China, the Chinese are viewed with suspicion and resentment, and that anytime a society faces a major tragedy or challenge, the Chinese are the first to be blamed. I was reminded of this reading The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam. Racism and racial stereotypes underlie much of the action in this serious novel. I emphasize serious because this is not a happy novel. Lam's protagonist, Percival Chen, is an ex patriot Chinese living outside of Saigon in the cruel years of WWII up until the American withdrawal in the 1970's. The Japanese invaders ruled with legendary brutality. Life in South Vietnam after the Japanese improved, but the regime's sponsors often looked the other way to corruption, violence, and cruelty. And political killings continued after the unification of Communist Vietnam. Chen is a great mirror for events of the time specifically because he is an outsider. Vietnamese usually show him the worst side of themselves, and people see him as just another money grubbing Chinese. He gambles. He whores. He eats sumptuous meals. I think the meals are probably the most appetizing part of the story, an offset to the gross beatings, and disembowelments, and suicide. I'm sure there was something nice about living in Vietnam during this period. The American occupation seems to have brought out the worst and sometimes the best in the very nationalistic Vietnamese. I recommend this story to readers. But be prepared for the worst...and sometimes the best in human ingenuity.… (más)

I don't know if it is social commentary, stereotype, or simply characterization that led Lam to make his title character a Chinese ex-pat with such stereotype values, that of making money and love for his son, but that is what propels this story.
The setting is primarily Vietnam, from Japanese occupation to Northern Viet Cong "liberation." Percival is headmaster at an English school. He has the benefit of befriending someone who is very well connected and crafty to make the impossible happen. Good thing, because while Percival can gamble and pick up prostitutes, he is rather single-mindedly focussed on his son, his money, and his selfish desires.
I expected the book to be a typical tragedy in which the protagonist is at the top of his world only to be brought down low on a rollercoster ride, but that is not quite how the story progresses. Percival has a lot of luck (he does like to wager, a theme that carries throughout the story). The question sits with the reader: should Percival be making all these wagers or is he foolish to do so, even though he wins often enough? When should a person go "all in" for something they feel strongly about? Set in the historical period and setting it is makes this question more interesting than if it was in Las Vegas, for example.
It's a long story, sometimes frustrating because I did not 'care' for the headmaster, as I often prefer to feel for the protagonist. I was frustrated by his obsession with his son, but I was still pulled through the novel.
Not a top ten for me, but certainly interesting particularly because of its context.… (más)

This rating is for the French translation, which was the only edition I could get a hold of through my library. The book itself, content-wise, is fine, but the tale seems longer in the telling in French. There were also some weird translator’s notes. For example, a bit where an English source uses the term “agent provocateur”, which has passed into the English language, and the translator leaves a note saying that agent provocateur was in French in the English source. Why point that out? What bugged me more, and what often bugs me about English-language biographies that quote from sources not in the same language as the biography, is that there was no statement about “all translations are the translator’s unless otherwise stated”. I would want to know whether the translator could have used existing French translations of English sources or if he had to translate all of the quotes as well. (A related thing I wonder about in English-language non-fiction is when people quote from non-English sources but have clearly translated them. Too few people state whether they’ve done the work themselves or relied on others. Sometimes this information comes up in the acknowledgements, but it should be in the text as well.)… (más)