Noble House

Cover from an old
edition

For the last month and a half, I have trudged through the task of reading James Clavell's Noble House.  The book is fantastic and that's quite possibly the understatement of the century.  I say "trudged" only because the book's length makes it a daunting task for any reader.  After a month and a half of reading, I am only on page 1010 out of 1400.  That makes it over 200 pages longer than Clavell's more famous behemoth, Shogun.  Even for an avid reader like myself, reading a book longer than many series can be a labor of love.

The book is a direct sequel to Clavell's Taipan, one of my favorite books from last year.  Set over the course of only one week in 1963, the book chronicles the intrigue surrounding Hong Kong's Noble House and its current enigmatic leader, Ian Dunross.  The excitement hasn't let up since the prologue where an illegal shipment of jet engines, bound for Red China, sinks in a storm at the very same moment Dunross is sworn in as the new Taipan (leader) of the Noble House.

From the TV miniseries, starring
Pierce Brosnon

Though no one will ever accuse me of sharing Clavell's belief in a benign China, buried by its Soviet neighbor, he writes about Chinese characters in a way no other waiguo author does, explaining cultural differences accurately and with an unflinching and unapologetic eye.  Today most would probably call his representations of Chinese characters as something less than PC.  However, I find them to be spot on, and I think he does a wonderful job of falling into the trap of a homogenous Asian continent.  Also the fact he is not Chinese eliminates the point most readers pounce on when reading Chinese books.  Many readers try to attribute baffling cultural differences or inconsistencies to translation errors, a point no one can make against Clavell.

I think the wonderful job Clavell does making the motivations and characteristics of Asian societies different from their "western" counterparts has certainly played an important role with how I have enjoyed his work.  I was unable to finish Shogun because I found it monotonous and boring, though comfortable and quaint.  The Japanese lust for power for the sake of status made the Japanese characters seem difficult to analyze.  They were just too different and difficult for me to relate to them.  However, I have loved both of Clavell's books that are set in Hong Kong for the very opposite reason.  My familiarity with Chinese culture has made the book interesting, funny, and tragic in ways that would have went over my head only a few years ago.

Despite my apprehensions about Shogun (that no one else seems to share), Clavell has proven himself to be a wonderful window onto Asia for the wider world.