THE HEADMASTER'S WAGER

Percival Chen is a naïve Chinese school teacher who has a weakness for gambling and for the young women who frequent the gambling establishments of Saigon. Feodor Chin immerses us in the war-torn world of 1960s Saigon, where the Chinese headmaster is respected for his business skills by the Americans and reviled for being Chinese and profiting from the war by his Vietnamese neighbors. Lam is on top of his craft describing the influences and cultures that made Vietnam such a powder keg in the late ’60s. Chin balances these many voices well as the headmaster is torn between the decisions he made and the ones he chose to ignore. S.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2012]