Mandarin

Young Bach seemed to have it all—the first born son of the wealthiest and most powerful mandarin at the Hue court, he grew to be a robust and handsome young man, irresistible to the women in his life, brilliant at his studies and with a natural gift for the martial arts. Bach was a true 'diamond son'. But Bach's was a case of the right birth at the wrong time. The feudal system that had dominated Viet Nam for more than a thousand years was locked in a death struggle with the forces of French colonial exploitation, Japanese imperialist lust and Ho Chi Minh's communist fanatics. The odds were stacked against Bach from the beginning and the mandarin's way of life was doomed in the cataclysmic birth throes of the modern socialist state. An epic tale of love and war, struggle, loss and rebirth, Bach's journey utterly captivates, from its first pages to its climactic finale.