By Adam Lewis Schroeder. Raincoast Books, 400 pp, $29.95, hardcover.

Anyone who has read Adam Lewis Schroeder’s short stories knows what a brave and punchy writer he can be. Still boyish enough in his prosaic swagger to avoid machismo but manly enough to be, well, manly, it’s almost as if he channels a well-travelled uncle’s devastating mix of pull-my-finger fun and fascination.

With the work of so many younger writers who move from “critically acclaimed” and “promising” short-story collections to first novels, the biggest fear for readers—not to mention publishers and agents—is whether the gifted voice in shorter forms can be translated and sustained in a novel.

For the most part, Schroeder’s debut novel, Empress of Asia, lives up to his earlier praise. Clocking in at just over 400 pages, it follows Harry Winslow as he moves from a naive young man in pre–World War II Vernon, B.C., to an ex–merchant marine survivor of a POW camp who uncovers a mystery involving his recently deceased war bride. But unlike many small-town-boy-coming-of-age stories, Schroeder’s tale never enters the realm of predictability. From classic jazz recordings and the eating of bats to war crimes, cross-dressing, and random Canadiana, Schroeder consistently folds disparate subjects into a smooth narrative that is both dark in humour and uncompromising in its depiction of wartime conditions.

Some authors seem to set their novels all over the world to satisfy publishers’ foreign-rights concerns, but Schroeder’s numerous locales are an integral part of the story and benefit greatly from his apt descriptions of otherness.

My only criticism concerns the choice to have Winslow be the narrator, as if he were describing everything to his just-deceased wife. This strategy intrigued in the beginning, but it jarred my suspension of disbelief whenever the occasional you popped up from the page. Having said that, Empress of Asia is an accomplished and textured tale that is both memorable and rewarding.