  We study zero temperature properties of a system of two coupled quantum spin
chains subject to fields explicitly breaking time reversal symmetry and parity.
Suitable choice of the strength of these fields gives a model soluble by Bethe
Ansatz methods which allows to determine the complete magnetic phase diagram of
the system and the asymptotics of correlation functions from the finite size
spectrum. The chiral properties of the system for both the integrable and the
nonintegrable case are studied using numerical techniques.
