Mandarin (2008 Novel)
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Mandarin (2008 Novel)
Mandarin, subtitled ''A Novel of Viet Nam'', is a novel by John Havan. The protagonist, ''Bach'', is the first-born son of the most powerful mandarin at the Nguyễn dynasty court in Hue.* At the time of Bach's birth, Virtnam's historical feudal system is locked in a struggle with French colonial exploitation, Japanese imperialism, and Ho Chi Minh's communist fanatics. Bach grows up 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, but his way of life is doomed in the cataclysmic birth throes of the modern Vietnamese socialist state. The book is an epic tale of love and war, struggle, loss, and rebirth. A sequel, ''The Tiger General The Tiger General, subtitled ''The Memoirs of a Vietnamese Intelligence Chief'', is a novel by John Havan. It was first published in 2011, and is a sequel to the 2008 novel Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin C ...
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John Havan
John Havan was born in Paris, France, in 1933. His Vietnamese father, a University of Paris, Sorbonne graduate in law, became Minister of Finance, Finance Minister under the administration of South Vietnamese President (government title), President Ngo Dinh Diem. His British mother, enrolled at the London School of Art, eventually became a painter who used Chinese calligraphy as a base for her brush-and-ink drawings of Vietnamese scenes. At home, the family spoke French. Havan was educated in England, won a scholarship to St Peter's Hall, St. Peter's Hall, University of Oxford, Oxford, where he read Jurisprudence for two years. From 1955 to 1972, he worked with American and European firms in the Asia-Pacific region in the fields of defense contracting, in particular spending the Vietnam War years, working for U.S. firms in South Vietnam. In 1956 he volunteered for two years' service in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) infantry, where he reached the rank of captain (arm ...
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Historical Fiction
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre, opera, cinema, and television, as well as video games and graphic novels. An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the depicted period. Authors also frequently choose to explore notable historical figures in these settings, allowing readers to better understand how these individuals might have responded to their environments. The historical romance usually seeks to romanticize eras of the past. Some subgenres such as alternate history and historical fantasy insert intentionally ahistorical or speculative elements into a novel. Works of historical fiction are sometimes criticized for lack of authe ...
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Mandarin (bureaucrat)
A mandarin () was a bureaucrat scholar in the history of China, Korea and Vietnam. The term is generally applied to the officials appointed through the imperial examination system; it sometimes includes the eunuchs also involved in the governance of the above realms. History and use of the term The English term comes from the Portuguese ''mandarim'' (spelled in Old Portuguese as ''mandarin,'' ). The Portuguese word was used in one of the earliest Portuguese reports about China: letters from the imprisoned survivors of the Tomé Pires' embassy, which were most likely written in 1524, and in Castanheda's ''História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia pelos portugueses'' (c. 1559). Matteo Ricci, who entered mainland China from Portuguese Macau in 1583, also said the Portuguese used the word. The Portuguese word was thought by many to be related to ''mandador'' ("one who commands") and ''mandar'' ("to command"), from Latin ''mandare''. Modern dictionaries, however, agree ...
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Nguyễn Dynasty
The Nguyễn dynasty (chữ Nôm: 茹阮, vi, Nhà Nguyễn; chữ Hán: 阮朝, vi, Nguyễn triều) was the last Vietnamese dynasty, which ruled the unified Vietnamese state largely independently from 1802 to 1883. During its existence, the empire expanded into modern-day southern Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos through a continuation of the centuries-long Nam tiến and Siamese–Vietnamese wars. After 1883, the Nguyễn emperors ruled nominally as heads of state of the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin until the final months of WWII; they later nominally ruled over the Empire of Vietnam until the August Revolution. The House of Nguyễn Phúc, Nguyễn Phúc family established feudal rule over large amounts of territory as the Nguyễn lords by the 16th century before defeating the Tây Sơn dynasty and establishing their own imperial rule in the 19th century. The dynastic rule began with Gia Long ascending the throne in 1802, after ending the previous Tây Sơn d ...
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French Indochina
French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, officially known as the Indochinese Union; vi, Liên bang Đông Dương, , lit. 'East Ocean Federation'; km, សហភាពឥណ្ឌូចិន; lo, ສະຫະພາບອິນໂດຈີນ and after 1947 as the Indochinese Federation,; vi, Liên đoàn Đông Dương; km, សហព័ន្ធឥណ្ឌូចិន; lo, ສະຫະພັນອິນດູຈີນ was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia until its demise in 1954. It comprised Cambodia, Laos (from 1899), the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan (from 1898 until 1945), and the Vietnamese regions of Tonkin (French protectorate), Tonkin in the north, Annam (French protectorate), Annam in the centre, and French Cochinchina, Cochinchin ...
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Japanese Imperialism
This is a list of regions occupied or annexed by the Empire of Japan until 1945, the year of the end of World War II in Asia, after the surrender of Japan. Control over all territories except most of the Japanese mainland (Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and some 6,000 small surrounding islands) was renounced by Japan in the unconditional surrender after World War II and the Treaty of San Francisco. A number of territories occupied by the United States after 1945 were returned to Japan, but there are still a number of disputed territories between Japan and Russia (the Kuril Islands dispute), South Korea and North Korea (the Liancourt Rocks dispute), the People's Republic of China and Taiwan (the Senkaku Islands dispute). Pre-1945 Colonies *Hokkaido — 1869–1918 *Chishima Islands – 1875–1918 *Ryukyu Islands – 1879–1918 *Nanpō Islands – 1891–1918 * Taiwan and the Penghu Islands – 1895–1945 *Minamitorishima – 1898–1918 *Karafuto – 1905–1943 * Kantō ...
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Ho Chi Minh
(: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as ('Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime Minister of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as President from 1945 until his death in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he served as Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam. was born in Nghệ An province in the French protectorate of Annam. He led the independence movement from 1941 onward. Initially, it was an umbrella group for all parties fighting for Vietnam's independence, but the Communist Party gained majority support after 1945. led the Communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, defeating the French Union in 1954 at the Battle of , ending the First Indochina War, and resulting in the division of Vietnam, with the Communists in control of North Vietnam. He was a key figure in the Pe ...
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North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed from 1945 to 1976 and was recognized in 1954. Both the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese states ceased to exist when they unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the August Revolution following World War II, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, leader of the Việt Minh Front, declared independence on 2 September 1945, announcing the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The Việt Minh ("League for the Independence of Vietnam"), led by communists, was created in 1941 and designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command. From the very beginning, the DRV regime sought to consolidate power by purging other nationalist movements. Meanwhile, France moved in t ...
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The Tiger General
The Tiger General, subtitled ''The Memoirs of a Vietnamese Intelligence Chief'', is a novel by John Havan. It was first published in 2011, and is a sequel to the 2008 novel Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand .... The plot The protagonist, ''Hai'', is the illegitimate son of ''Bach'', the protagonist of the preceding work. A born survivor, Hai continually re-invents himself under the French, Viet Minh and Japanese regimes. At thirty-six years of age, he comes into his own and his rise is unstoppable, emerging as the 'Tiger General' in the South Vietnamese Republic. The main part of the book is based on the communist Vietnamese spy, Pham Xuan An. who was a friend of the author many years. Reviews * * References 2011 novels English-language novels Novels se ...
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2008 Novels
8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of the form , being an integer greater than 1. * the first number which is neither prime nor semiprime. * the base of the octal number system, which is mostly used with computers. In octal, one digit represents three bits. In modern computers, a byte is a grouping of eight bits, also called an octet. * a Fibonacci number, being plus . The next Fibonacci number is . 8 is the only positive Fibonacci number, aside from 1, that is a perfect cube. * the only nonzero perfect power that is one less than another perfect power, by Mihăilescu's Theorem. * the order of the smallest non-abelian group all of whose subgroups are normal. * the dimension of the octonions and is the highest possible dimension of a normed division algebra. * the first number ...
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English-language Novels
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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Novels Set In Vietnam
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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