As part of 49th Shelf's #Fest2Fest, Julie Wilson is speaking with authors across the country (and abroad) who are appearing at literary festivals to promote their latest books.
For all our #Fest2Fest updates, bookmark www.49thshelf.com/Festivals.
Among other festivals, Vincent Lam (The Headmaster's Wager) will appear at Calgary's WordFest. For all details, go here.
This year's festival runs October 9-14, 2012.
Julie (also appearing at WordFest to promote Seen Reading) chatted with Vincent about the follow up to his 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning short story collection Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (Doubleday Canada), and the core similarity between his two lives: one as a writer, the other as an emergency room physician.
Enjoy!
About the book: 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 forever changing lists 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.
About the author: Dr. Vincent Lam is from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam, and was born in Canada. Dr. Lam did his medical training in Toronto, and is an emergency physician in Toronto. He is a Lecturer with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. He has also worked in international air evacuation and expedition medicine on Arctic and Antarctic ships.
Dr. Lam's first book, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has recently been adapted for television and broadcast on HBO Canada. Dr. Lam co-authored The Flu Pandemic And You, a non-fiction guide to influenza pandemics.
The Headmaster's Wager, Dr. Lam's first novel, about a Chinese compulsive gambler and headmaster of an English school in Saigon during the Vietnam War, is published by Doubleday Canada. Dr. Lam's biography of Tommy Douglas is published by Penguin Canada as part of Extraordinary Canadians series.
www.vincentlam.ca | @drvincentlam | Facebook
About WordFest: WordFest’s main event is a six-day literary festival that features upwards of 70 writers from the local, national and international stage. The Festival has approximately 60 separate events and attracts an audience of over 14,000. Some events also offer programming in multiple languages such as French and Spanish. Festival events take place across Calgary and in Banff through founding production partner, The Banff Centre.
Follow them on Twitter at @wordfesttweets.
Follow all festival happenings, and contribute your own, using the hashtag #wordfest2012.