The Headmaster's Wager
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The Headmaster's Wager
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Narrated by:
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Feodor Chin
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By:
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Vincent Lam
About this listen
A superbly crafted, highly suspenseful, and deeply affecting debut novel about one man’s loyalty to his country, his family and his heritage.
Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English academy in 1960s Saigon, and he is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of his school. Fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, he is quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided country, though he also harbors a weakness for gambling haunts and the women who frequent them. He devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls around him, 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 whom he is able to confide in. But Percival's new-found happiness is precarious, and as the complexities of war encroach further into his world, he must confront the tragedy of all he has refused to see.
Graced with intriguingly flawed but wonderfully human characters moving through a richly drawn historical landscape, The Headmaster's Wager is an unforgettable story of love, betrayal and sacrifice.
©2012 Victor Lam (P)2012 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 378
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4 out of 5 stars 133
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
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The Orphan Keeper
- By: Camron Wright
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,075
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2,758
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2,754
Seven-year-old Chellamuthu's life - and his destiny - is forever changed when he is kidnapped from his village in Southern India and sold to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children. His family is desperate to find him, and Chellamuthu anxiously tells the Indian orphanage that he is not an orphan, he has a mother who loves him. But he is told not to worry, he will soon be adopted by a loving family in America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 Star Worthy
- By Kari on 10-26-16
By: Camron Wright
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4 out of 5 stars 101
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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When the Moon Is Low
- A Novel
- By: Nadia Hashimi
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Neil Shah
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
Mahmoud’s passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good story. Poor ending
- By Janine on 01-14-22
By: Nadia Hashimi
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I, Who Did Not Die
- A Sweeping Story of Loss, Redemption, and Fate
- By: Zahed Haftlang, Najah Aboud
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
Khorramshahr, Iran, May 1982 - It was the bloodiest battle of one of the most brutal wars of the twentieth century, and Najah, a 29-year-old wounded Iraqi conscript, was face to face with a 13-year-old Iranian child soldier who was ordered to kill him. Instead, the boy committed an astonishing act of mercy. It was an act that decades later would save his own life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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- By jennie on 04-10-24
By: Zahed Haftlang, and others
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Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 55
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
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5 out of 5 stars
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sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
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The Tea Rose
- By: Jennifer Donnelly
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 28 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,997
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,838
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,825
East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow. Wow wow wow!
- By I like to shop on 04-26-16
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 439
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 390
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 390
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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Diamond Head
- A Novel
- By: Cecily Wong
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Samantha Chen, Angela Lin, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 113
Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
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5 out of 5 stars
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.
- By Gina on 09-06-15
By: Cecily Wong
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 791
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 724
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Story4 out of 5 stars 727
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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Nocturne
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Blech
- By Caroline H. on 02-20-11
By: Diane Armstrong
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The Glass Palace
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 695
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 529
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 527
Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I struggled to finish... enough said.
- By Ty on 05-02-10
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Wife of the Gods
- A Novel
- By: Kwei Quartey
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 274
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 149
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Story4 out of 5 stars 150
Detective Inspector Darko Dawson, a good family man and a remarkably intuitive sleuth, is sent to the village of Ketanu---the site of his mother's disappearance many years ago---to solve the murder of an accomplished young AIDS worker. While battling his own anger issues and concerns for his ailing son, Darko explores the motivations and secrets of the residents of Ketanu.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engrossing Mystery in a Fascinating Setting
- By Tracey Rains on 04-19-10
By: Kwei Quartey
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The Space Between Us
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,141
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 994
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 993
Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Story that stays with you
- By gardener97 on 04-25-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
What listeners say about The Headmaster's Wager
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rhonda
- 02-01-16
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.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Reed Ramlow
- 03-18-21
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.
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