About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
From one of Canada's best young voices comes a sweeping literary adventure set against the backdrop of French Indochina.
Paris, 1909: Adelie Tremier, a young widow suffering the final stages of tuberculosis, flees for French-occupied Indochina, through the lush forests of Laos, to seek out a fabled spring of immortality that might allow her to return to her nine-year-old son.
Laos, 1936: Pierre Lazarie, a young academic turned Saigon bureaucrat, is sent by Adelie's son, now an Army captain, to find his longlost mother. Although his assigned quest fulfills Pierre�s fantasy to travel up the exotic Mekong, he is saddled with his colleague Henri LeDallic, an Indochina old-timer who would rather glory in his loutish past than hunt for ghosts in the jungle. Yet what this mismatched pair discovers forms the mysterious heart of Adam Lewis Schroeder's brilliant and compelling new novel.
Bridging history from 1890s Aix-en-Provence to American involvement in 1950s Vietnam, In the Fabled East is a rich and sensual depiction of Southeast Asia, charting the loss of innocence of both individuals and the world at large. Echoing Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, this is historical fiction written with wisdom and panache.
Awards
- Short-listed, Commonwealth Writers' Prize - Best Book, Canada & the Caribbean
Editorial Reviews
"At first, [In the Fabled East] is leisurely paced, as if suffused with the heat of Vietnam and Laos. But it becomes more dramatic and gripping as Adelie's story becomes more other-worldly. Ultimately, it's a magical story about the permanence of love, romantic, connubial, maternal, and patriotic."
— Uptown Magazine
"Schroeder deliciously conjures the mad, hot, stinking confusion that is Indochine, the jumble of native and colonial customs, the bullock carts, betel juice, rickshaws and rice pounders alongside white linen suits, afternoon cocktails and louche French girls with their tennis games and sunstroke. A book to read, a writer to watch."
— Telegraph-Journal
"The author demonstrates a strong sense of place with well-written descriptive passages that make readers feel they are right there in colonial Indochina with the protagonists...good choice for general readers who prefer a light, 'popcorn' style of fiction set in exotic locations."
— Library Journal
"Schroeder is a sensitive, postcolonial Canadian alert to the facades erected by suffering natives and bluff imperialists alike."
— Georgia Straight
"A sublime and often hilarious travel adventure."
— Toro Magazine
"No other writer gets the heat, the chaos, the shimmering otherness of the East quite like Penticton's Adam Lewis Schroeder. His second novel, In the Fabled East, is a witty romp through colonial Indochina that focuses on two French nationals separated by time and gender. . . united partly by war, partly by dissolution of empire, but mainly by a mother-and-child reunion."
— Toronto Star
"Schroeder's considerable research is evident and the descriptions beautifully written."
— Publishers Weekly
