GOLD-PLATED PUPPETS

Gold-Plated Puppets is a sharp, satirical social novel about a newly wealthy family desperately trying to cover their lives, status, culture, and conscience with a thin layer of gold.

Through the story of Mr. Loc, Mrs. Mui, their Western-educated daughter Thanh, the old patriarch Phuc, Dr. Minh Hung, the housemaid Hao, and a vivid cast of supporting characters, the novel creates a tragicomic portrait of modern social vanity. Luxury villas, designer handbags, imported wine, koi ponds, fake aristocratic manners, livestreamed charity campaigns, social media morality, and glittering real estate projects all become symbols of a society obsessed with appearance but starved of inner substance.

More than a story about the nouveau riche, Gold-Plated Puppets is a literary dissection of the gap between being rich and being refined, between tradition and performance, between cultural roots and lifestyle branding. With biting humor, vivid realism, and moments of deep compassion, the novel asks a haunting question: when the golden surface peels away, what remains of a human being?

This book is ideal for readers interested in literary satire, Vietnamese social fiction, family drama, urban transformation, class anxiety, cultural identity, and the moral cost of wealth in contemporary society.