The Tiger General
book by John Havan
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.
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
Ezra Kyrill Erker (January 29, 2012). "In the eyes of a 'TigerGeneral'". The Bangkok Post.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Tiger General” as book by John Havan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as book by John Havan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48812584. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2008 and 2012.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow The Tiger General primary sources, The Tiger General archive and Tiger research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Tiger General” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.