Irrawaddy Tango (1993)

Wendy Law-Yone's second novel is narrated by Tango, a village girl in an Asian country called Daya whose performance of the "Irrawaddy Tango" at a talent contest catches the eye of the colonel known as Supremo, whom she marries on an impulse. She becomes the consort of the country's hated dictator, then a leader of the rebels against him, and follows the story from the 1940s to America and back. (Open Library)

Watches

Omega (unidentified model): Looking back on the extravagances that came her way as the general's wife, Tango says that he himself was above greed, a good Buddhist who wanted only rice, salt fish, pickled bamboo and a thatch hut, which he would say while fingering his Omega watch, smoking his 555s and downing his Johnnie Walker Black Label. The speeches that followed always explained why martial law was necessary. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: He used to go on about the paltriness of his own desires: "Just give me rice, salt fish, pickled bamboo, a thatch hut," et cetera, while he fingered his Omega watch, smoked his 555s, and downed his Johnnie Walker Black Label. (Wendy Law-Yone, Irrawaddy Tango, scan cataloged as Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, p. 85; the jacket copy names Supremo and the narrator; Internet Archive scan OCR)