The Headmaster's Wager

By: Vincent Lam

Narrated by: Feodor Chin

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.

Excellent Book. Different Vietnam war perspective

Where does The Headmaster's Wager rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The narrator was very skilled at reading what could have been a very complicated book. He was able to keep my interest and helped me enjoy the book even more.

Have you listened to any of Feodor Chin’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. I listened over a period of weeks while driving.

Fallible protagonist but won my support

Well-plotted debut novel deserving of its accolades. Percival Chen is a fallible protagonist who has a significant hand in creating his own serial predicaments. Yet in the end I was pulling for him. The ephemeral maîtresse Jaqueline, half-French, half-Vietnamese, broke my heart. Vincent Lam’s description of Vietnam’s Chinese community in Cholon is brave and unsparing. The Headmaster’s Wager book is a better read than The Sympathizer that gained more attention.