Mandarin,
the first novel, tells the story of Bach, the first-born
son of a Court family in Central Viet Nam. His father, a
powerful and feared Mandarin, heads an underground movement
against the French and prepares his son for a life of exile
abroad with other political activists seeking to win the
support of Japan, China and Siam against French colonialism.
After many years in exile, they fail in their quest. With
the taste of bitterness in his mouth, Bach returns home to
take over the reins of power from his father. But, battered
by the successive waves of death and devastation left by
World Wars One and Two, the Japanese occupation and the
first Viet Nam war, Bach's feudal world has disintegrated
beyond recognition. It takes all of his spiritual and physical
strength to rebuild his patrimony and save his official
family, his many relatives, his second wives, concubines,
mistresses and their progeny from starvation and death. The
pomp and pageantry surrounding his title had evaporated, and
he had become what his detractors called him, a paper tiger
- a mandarin without power. After the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Bach is
arrested by the Thanh Hoa People's Committee, accused of
being a bloodsucking landlord, brutally tortured and a date
for his public execution is set. How he escapes death at the
last moment and rebuilds his life in the South is based on a
true story that the author relives in fiction.
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Tiger
General, the second novel, is about Hai, one of
Bach's many illegitimate children, born from a casual
affair with a village girl. Mother and son run away from the
manor in Thanh Hoa province and end up as vagrants under a
bridge in Ha Noi, where
the mother dies of tuberculosis. Before she dies, she tells
Hai he was cursed at birth by three bad stars and has to
survive thirty-six years before his lucky star can rise in
his Career House. Buffeted by the First World War, the
Second World War and the Japanese occupation, Hai goes from
being a beggar and a pickpocket to a member of the communist
underground resistance to a French police informer to a
Japanese police analyst to a French intelligence agent. At
thirty-six years of age, he comes into his own, as his
mother predicted, and his rise is unstoppable. Recruited by
the CIA, decorated by his President as a police general, the
Tiger cuts a wide swathe through his enemies after the Tet
offensive, ending his career as a senior political
consultant at the US State Department, working to
bring freedom back to his people.
Read
more...
Kaleidoscope
of War, the third novel, is a collage of
short stories as seen from the ground by men who fought in
the second Viet Nam war, from 1955 to 1975. Army of the
Republic of Viet Nam troops (ARVN); National Liberation
Front guerrillas (Viet Cong); People's Army of Viet Nam (PAVN,
formerly the Viet Minh); Chinese coolies drafted into
portage duty down the Ho Chi Minh trails; Russian military
instructors in Ha Noi; US military advisors and combat
troops tell their stories in the first person. Some, more
motivated than others, fought for a cause; some because they
had to; some because they enjoyed the God-like power that a
man with a gun in a civilian community feels. Some fought
for revenge; some because they liked killing; others for no
particular reason. Nameless, faceless, they all fought. Many
died unburied. Many stepped on landmines and came home with
missing limbs to find their family had evaporated in a hail
of bombs. A few came home to their families but found they
couldn't fit in any more and soon moved on. Very few were
lucky enough to come back to normality. Read more...
Tiger
General, the second novel, is about Hai, one of
Bach's many illegitimate children, born from a casual
affair with a village girl. Mother and son run away from the
manor in Thanh Hoa province and end up as vagrants under a
bridge in Ha Noi, where
the mother dies of tuberculosis. Before she dies, she tells
Hai he was cursed at birth by three bad stars and has to
survive thirty-six years before his lucky star can rise in
his Career House. Buffeted by the First World War, the
Second World War and the Japanese occupation, Hai goes from
being a beggar and a pickpocket to a member of the communist
underground resistance to a French police informer to a
Japanese police analyst to a French intelligence agent. At
thirty-six years of age, he comes into his own, as his
mother predicted, and his rise is unstoppable. Recruited by
the CIA, decorated by his President as a police general, the
Tiger cuts a wide swathe through his enemies after the Tet
offensive, ending his career as a senior political
consultant at the US State Department, working to
bring freedom back to his people.
Kaleidoscope
of War, the third novel, is a collage of
short stories as seen from the ground by men who fought in
the second Viet Nam war, from 1955 to 1975. Army of the
Republic of Viet Nam troops (ARVN); National Liberation
Front guerrillas (Viet Cong); People's Army of Viet Nam (PAVN,
formerly the Viet Minh); Chinese coolies drafted into
portage duty down the Ho Chi Minh trails; Russian military
instructors in Ha Noi; US military advisors and combat
troops tell their stories in the first person. Some, more
motivated than others, fought for a cause; some because they
had to; some because they enjoyed the God-like power that a
man with a gun in a civilian community feels. Some fought
for revenge; some because they liked killing; others for no
particular reason. Nameless, faceless, they all fought. Many
died unburied. Many stepped on landmines and came home with
missing limbs to find their family had evaporated in a hail
of bombs. A few came home to their families but found they
couldn't fit in any more and soon moved on. Very few were
lucky enough to come back to normality.