Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures welcomes readers into a world where the most mundane events can quickly become life or death. By following four young medical students and physicians - Ming, Fitz, Sri and Chen - this debut collection from 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam is a riveting, eye-opening account of what it means to be a doctor. Deftly navigating his way through 12 interwoven short stories, the author explores the characters' relationships with each other, their patients, and their careers. Lam draws on his own experience as an emergency room physician and shares an insider's perspective on the fears, frustrations, and responsibilities linked with one of society's most highly regarded occupations. "I wanted to write about the way in which a person changes as they become a physician -- how their world view shifts, and how they become a slightly different version of themselves in the process of becoming a doctor," Lam explains. "I wanted to write about the reality that doing good and trying to help others is not simple. It is ethically complicated and sometimes involves a reality that can only be expressed by telling a story." In the book's first story, "How to Get into Medical School, Part 1," students Ming and Fitz wrestle with their opposing personalities and study techniques, while coming to terms with a growing emotional connection that elicits disapproval from Ming's traditional Chinese-Canadian parents. Lam's exceptional talent for describing scenarios with great precision is showcased in "Take All of Murphy," when Ming, Chen, and Sri find themselves at a moral crossroads while dissecting a cadaver. Throughout the book, readers are treated to thephysicians' internal thoughts and the mental drama involved with treating patients, including Fitz's struggle with self-doubt in "Code Clock" and Chen's boredom and exhaustion in "Before Light." From delivering babies to evacuating patients and dealing with deadly viruses, the four primary characters in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures are made thoroughly human by Lam's insightful detail, realistic dialogue, and expert storytelling. The medical world is naturally filled with drama, but it's the author's ability to give equal weight to the smaller moments that really brings this book to life. "From the Hardcover edition."

Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures

Literature & Fiction

Vincent Lam

Contemporary

4th Estate

The Headmaster's Wager

From internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Vincent Lam comes a superbly crafted, highly suspenseful, and deeply affecting novel set against the turmoil of the Vietnam War.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 a forever-changing list 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.Blessed with intriguingly flawed characters moving through a richly drawn historical and physical landscape, The Headmaster's Wager is a riveting story of love, betrayal and sacrifice.

Hogarth

On the Ravine

Knopf Canada

Through the eyes of Fitz, Ming, Chen, and Sri, Vincent Lam finds conflict - and humanity - in the most surprising moments. Together these doctors test the boundaries of intimacy as they cope with exam pressure, weigh moral dilemmas as they dissect cadavers, confront police who assault their patients, and treat schizophrenics with pathologies similar to their own.  Winner of the 2006 Giller Prize for fiction - the only debut work ever to have won the prestigious literary prize - Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures looks with rigorous honesty at the lives of doctors and their patients and illuminates a deeper understanding of the fears, choices, and temptations that face us all.  “Vincent Lam’s book is amazing, beautiful, and painful. I cannot believe that a writer can emerge, so fully-formed and incisive, with his first book. This guy is a star.” - Sherman Alexie, bestselling author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Flight

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

Short Stories & Anthologies

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Books by Vincent Lam