The setting is Hong Kong, 1963. The action spans scarcely more than a week, but these are the days of high adventure: from kidnapping and murder to financial double-dealing and natural catastrophes -- fire, flood, and landslide. Yet they are days filled as well with all the mystery and romance of Hong Kong -- the heart of Asia -- rich in every trade... money, flesh, opium, power.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: I have read it twice, given enough time I will read it again. Comment: An all time great read. I loved it! I am already planning on reading it a 3rd time.
Noble House and Shogun are tied for the top spot in my personal list of top ten books I have read in my life.
Just buy it and read it, you will enjoy it! Customer Rating: Summary: A MASTERPIECE WORTHY OF THE TAIPAN! Comment: James Clavell was a WONDERFUL Writer (yes, with a capital W) and NOBLE HOUSE was a gift he left to us!
Through his eyes we visit Hong Kong in the 1970's. Clavell, like a virtuoso connaisseur of the human condition he is, manages to interweave a multitude of stories into a continuous carpet of a city living fast, taking risks, winning and loosing but never giving up.
Heads of huge conglomerates on the verge of foundering - yet never letting go of their rival's throat; dirt-poor Chinese maids striking it rich by a sudden turn of their joss; photographer-Wo and his trophy collection; drug-running smugglers asking for favors-you-can't-refuse; cold war spy networks riddled with double and triple agents; an American stock-market runner trying his hand in raiding Hong Kong companies; ladies getting "pillowed", men getting wooed, fortunes made and lost in the 10 days these all take place. Will the Noble House survive?
To quote Balzac, behind every great fortune lies crime. To prove him right, Noble House is but a thinly veiled reference to Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd, a real company. Anticlimactically for an historic British company operating in China, it is nowadays incorporated in Bermuda - and trying to forget its opium-running past (like so many City of London companies respectable today yet founded on drugs and dead natives).
All these stories are presented masterfully, without ever loosing the reader's interest or dropping the ball of building tension. There were less than a dozen writers who could do this - starting with Homer.
My copy was so worn I had to replace it.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
PS:
There is a 1988 TV mini series based on this book - of comparable merit. (The mini-series used to be available only on VHS, but, as of March 2008, it is also available on a beautiful DVD edition). The major casting was excellent (having suave Pierce Brosnan and beastly John Rhys-Davies go head-to-head was a stroke of genius). Although it run for 6 hours total, it barely scraped the surface of the complex story-lines. Truly beautiful production.
Nevertheless, my advice is to first read the book and only THEN watch the TV version. Customer Rating: Summary: Wonderful! Comment: James Clavell was an excellent writer ... I'm always glad to read (and re-read) his material. Just finished Noble House. The way the author ties, weaves and overlaps centuries of stories and people and families is simply astounding.
Highly recommended! Customer Rating: Summary: Another Great Entry in the Asian Saga Comment: The characters in this book are just so real. This book, like the others, isn't packed with incredible action and suspense but it's an amazing story all the same and a very enjoyable read. Customer Rating: Summary: An interesting look at high powered business in Hong Kong Comment: This is a long but very enjoyable story. It captures the plots and dangers of business and finance in Hong Kong in a way that makes it so the story never gets boring. Clavell has a knack for historical fiction and insight into Asian culture that few if any western authors seem to. Clavell's personal experiences as a prisoner of war in world war II form the basis for King Rat and perhaps help explain his fascination with Japan and Hong Kong. Shogun met with great success despite it also being a rather long novel and Noble House builds on this story several generations later with the same vibrant and multidimensional character development that makes this book a great read as well.
