Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories by Vincent Lam

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories by Vincent Lam

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

Vincent Lam was born in 1974 in London, Ont., into a family from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam. Four years later, they moved to Ottawa where he was raised on stories told by his father and the works of C.S. Lewis and Roald Dahl, and developed aspirations to become a writer. Acknowledging that he hadn't seen enough of the world to create great literary works, Lam enrolled in medical school at the University of Toronto, hoping it would provide real-life experience and a wealth of rich material. His plan proved to be a very good one.

It was while working as a doctor aboard an Arctic cruise that Lam had a chance encounter with renowned author Margaret Atwood. She agreed to read his short stories, and later sent him an email announcing Congratulations. You can write. Atwood mentored the young author, and was instrumental in bringing Lam to his publisher, Doubleday Canada.

While crafting his debut collection of short stories, Lam worked in the emergency room at Toronto East General Hospital and helped fight the 2003 SARS outbreak. An emergency physician is often in the centre of a storm of tensions and drama, he says. We work in a world that is both medical and personal, where the stakes are high and events are unpredictable. As a doctor, I respond to the world around me, and act within that world. As a writer, I do something fresh and new on the page.

Lam's depiction of four medical students who become doctors in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures was so unique and accomplished that the collection won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize - Canada's most prestigious literary award. He is the youngest writer, and the only first-time author, to win it.

Next up is Lam's first novel, Cholon, Near Forgotten, which follows a Chinese man in Saigon, headmaster of an English school as well as a compulsive gambler, during the Vietnam War. Shaftesbury Films is currently developing Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures into a TV drama series for The Movie Network and Lam will act as a consultant while continuing to work as an emergency physician in Toronto, where he lives with his wife and son.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385661447
ISBN 10	0385661444
Title	Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories
Author	Vincent Lam
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Anchor Canada
Year published	2006-09-26
Number of pages	355
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.