Review
Vincent Lam's The Headmaster's Wager
is a top choice among BookBrowse readers. 16 out of 18 reviewers gave it 4 or 5 stars! Here is what they say:
The Headmaster's Wager is a well-crafted, deeply engaging book - one that I read in only two sittings because it was that hard to put it down…it's my favorite book of the summer (Jen W). Vincent Lam, whose parents and grandparents lived in an expatriate Chinese community in Vietnam, is especially suited to write
The Headmaster's Wager. Lam's stories of a Chinese minority's existence in Vietnam has bell ringing clarity and concrete believability (Chet Y). I rarely say this, but I think this book was just about perfect. The story was expertly plotted and so tense I sometimes had to put the book down for a moment and take a deep breath, my fear for the characters was so real (Erin G)....
Beyond the Book
Although Dr. Vincent Lam was born in Canada, he is "of the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam." Lam is an emergency physician in Toronto, as well as a lecturer with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. Other medical jobs have included international air evacuation and expedition medicine on Arctic and Antarctic ships. Lam has written non-fiction and short stories;
The Headmaster's Wager is his first novel.
The book is inspired by the experiences of Lam's grandfather. Although Lam did not grow up in Vietnam, his parents were born there, and his grandfather lived and worked there....
