Excerpt from The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was, in fact, the powerhouse of South Vietnam. Cho Lon Chinese controlled the vast majority of trading houses, which also handled the shipping and warehousing of every conceivable commodity for domestic consumption and export.

The buses delivered us to a three-story hotel on a wide commercial street. Typical of the low-end Chinese establishments, it was a sad, dark, dingy place, manned by a humorless middle-age Chinese who couldn't summon a greeting or a smile. The lobby was an eight-by-eight-foot space with a wooden bench and a board painted with the hotel rules in Chinese and Viet. It was devoid of decoration—not a single painting, poster, or potted plant. The windowless rooms were small and hot, with clumps of cobwebs in the corners. The ceiling fans did nothing but draw out the reek of mildew and cigarettes from the peeling walls. Stuffy air from the hallway oozed into the rooms through wooden screens above the doors. There was a communal bathroom on each floor. Surprisingly, there was one redeeming feature in the building: the toilet. It was a squat affair with a cast-iron water tank mounted up near the ceiling. Back in Hanoi, where there was no sewage system, we only had pit toilets filled with calcium oxide powder, the compost collected periodically by municipal workers using ox-drawn carts. A flush toilet, I thought, was surely a sign of civilization.

But Saigon held little prospect for us to make a new life. The first week, Father roamed about town looking for work only to return well after dark empty-handed. With the Chinese manager patrolling the hall to keep people from cooking in the hotel, Stepmother made do with greasy Chinese fare and low-grade rice from street stalls. We gathered on the floor and ate the lukewarm food Stepmother laid on the straw mat.

Father didn't eat much. He sat slump-shouldered, shaking his head, talking in his quiet, defeated voice. "There's nothing. It's hopeless. They won't hire me because I'm not Chinese."

Stepmother said, "Can you look elsewhere?"

"The Chinese control everything; they own everything. Look around you; they even got the government contracts to house us northerners." Father sighed. He had handled a fair amount of government transactions in Hanoi and knew how profitable it could be.

But it was easy to forget our dire situation because the ultimate entertainment center in Saigon sat directly across the street from the hotel. It was an ugly, enigmatic compound the size of three city blocks enclosed by a tall, corrugated sheet-metal wall, looking very much like a giant construction site. There was not even a single billboard over the gate to hint at what was within. A policeman guarded the entrance and enforced a single rule: No shirt, no entry. Bare feet, body odor, and rags, however, were acceptable. Men, women, and children of all ages passed through at all hours. The place bustled during the day, but at night, it turned into a raging carnival.

It was owned by Mr. Vien the Seventh, the biggest mafia boss in South Vietnam, who had his own army based in a forest between Saigon and Vung Tau. The establishment originally started as a casino, but it grew to provide every service, material good, and entertainment imaginable. It grew until it became true to its name—The Great World. Beneath the great span of its interlacing roofs were jewelers, gold dealers, pawnshops, clothing stores, exotic-medicine purveyors, herbalists, massage parlors, theater stages, private rooms for hourly rental, opium lounges, teahouses with hostesses, nice restaurants, little noodle stands, food stalls, candy shops, bakeries, and an amusement park with, among other rides, two merry-go-round carousels and our favorite, the bumper-car arena. It even had its own climate, controlled by fans and vents.

Allowance in hands, we followed other refugees into the Great World. We lost ourselves in the crowd of gamblers, drinkers, opium users, whores, pimps, crooks, businessmen, and entertainers. While my brothers and I stayed close to the amusement park area, wasting most of our money on bumper cars, my cousin Tan ran off alone to the gambling tables.

Excerpted from The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham. Copyright © 2008 by Andrew X. Pham. Excerpted by permission of Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.