Product Description

Over one hundred years have passed since Dirk Struan founded Hong Kong’s oldest trading company. But now, the Noble House is in danger. As Hong Kong itself becomes the deadly playground of the CIA, the KGB and the People’s Republic of China, rival tai-pans, seeking revenge for blood feuds over a century old, gather for the kill.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14696 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1296 pages

Review
"* 'Breathtaking. Only terms like colossal, gigantic, titanic, unbelievable, gargantuan are properly descriptive' - Chicago Tribune * 'Seethes with drama, sex, crime... Clavell is, as always, a matchless talespinner' - Cosmopolitan * 'A grand drama, with the glamour, mystique and perils of the Orient... it has such breadth and power that at the end you will want to start at the beginning again.' - Manchester Evening News * 'NOBLE HOUSE totally fulfils the function of a novel, taking me out of myself and transporting me into a majestic sweep of intrigue and excitement' - David Niven"

There's nothing wrong with Clavell's new "Asian Saga" novel that cutting 900 pages wouldn't fix. No, that's not a misprint: at 1206 pp., this account of one interminable week in 1963 Hong Kong stretches out a conventional but adequate plot - financial deals plus criss-crossing spies - with awesomely tedious, constantly rehashing conversations; and, unlike Tai-Pan and Shogun, there's little Far Eastern exotica here to hold your interest while the padding mounts up. Primary focus is on Ian Duncross, new tai-pan of Hong Kong's oldest trading house - who's hoping to save Noble House from bankruptcy via a joint-venture deal with US entrepreneur Linc Bartlett, just arrived in HK with his right-hand woman, Casey. But Ian's plans are fraught with peril: Bartlett is an unscrupulous type who'll ditch the deal if he can find a better one; Ian's arch-enemy, Quillan Gornt of the Rothwell-Gornt house, is out to snatch up Noble House, with help from some shady bank-collapse and selling-short maneuvers; and Noble House employee John then (soon kidnapped and dead) has been peddling company secrets, even stealing the legendary half-coin (whoever possesses it can demand any favor of the tai-pan). So, while Ian goes from bank to bank and nation to nation looking for bail-out money (in case the Bartlett deal collapses), Clavell piles on the other half of the plot: the presence of secret communist agents in Hong Kong - at Noble House, in the police, even in British Intelligence. And there are also subplots galore: Chinese gold, gun, and drug smugglers; romances (Bartlett and a Eurasian, Casey and everybody); racetrack doings. Eventually, Ian will become entangled in the spy fracas - because he possesses documentary clues to the identity of the "moles" - and eventually Clavell also throws in some Mafia and Red-China touches. But just about everything is rendered moot by a landslide in the last 100 pages - some blessed action after acres of money-talk and who's-the-mole? jabber - and it all finally ends with the surfacing of that half-coin. Flat, colorless characters; slipshod, pulp-mag prose ("Are you the magic I've been seeking forever or just another broad?"); little suspense, violence, or sex. In other words, Dullsville - but the Clavell name will ensure big interest. . . at least until word-of-mouth takes over. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review
'Breathtaking. Only terms like colossal, gigantic, titanic, unbelievable, gargantuan are properly descriptive' (Chicago Tribune )

'Seethes with drama, sex, crime . . . Clavell is, as always, a matchless talespinner' (Cosmopolitan )

'A grand drama, with the glamour, mystique and perils of the Orient . . . it has such breadth and power that at the end you will want to start at the beginning again.' (Manchester Evening News )

'NOBLE HOUSE totally fulfils the function of a novel, taking me out of myself and transporting me into a majestic sweep of intrigue and excitement' (David Niven )

'Fiction for addicts . . . A book that you can get lost in for weeks. Not only is it as long as life, it's also as rich with possibilities' (New York Times )

Synopsis
Over one hundred years have passed since Dirk Struan founded Hong Kong's oldest trading company. But now, the Noble House is in danger. As Hong Kong itself becomes the deadly playground of the CIA, the KGB and the People's Republic of China, rival tai-pans, seeking revenge for blood feuds over a century old, gather for the kill.

Customer Reviews

A MASTERPIECE WORTHY OF THE TAIPAN!
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!

The best book i have ever read
First, if your going to start reading the Asian Saga, you must go back and read them in order. Even Shogan has little sub plots which if you read carfully Noble House you will see. If you don't do this you will miss out on some of the books sub plots irony.
But this is a roller Coster of a Novel, it never stops from page one to page one thousand.
This is the best writen book, James Clavell writes like a novelist should, the charters come alive in your mind and by the time your finished they're as real as your mother.
If your going to read one book this year make it this one.

A brilliant, colossal epic.
Noble House is huge, totalling 1284 pages. However, unlike you might think - the story ALWAYS flows and there are no pauses! There are several sub-plots along with the main plot, which is the fate of Struan's and it's tai-pan Ian Struan Dunross.

The book's ending is a bit rushed up but it's still excellent ...I think Clavell could have avoided giving the disaster at the end too much importance. Moreover, Clavell leaves much food for thought after the book as several of the sub-plots aren't totally resolved. However, Noble House is absolutely brilliant and Clavell's insight into Hong Kong's cultures is plainly...superb, really, really superb. It is a must read for anyone interested in the Asian way of life. I just love the way Dunross deals (Eurasian) compared to the Chinese Four Finger Wu and the American Bartlett.

As usual, Clavell provides the reader with a bible of deep Asian inisights set in a capitalist Hong Kong arena...and remember...Asians are FIRST asians...and then anything else ;-)

Must read. Shogun was perhaps better as the portrait of 16th century Japan is AMAZING but Noble House is more colossal in the fact that the 10+ sub-plots assume a massive importance in the end, while Shogun was more centred on the three figures of Blackthorne, Toronaga and Mariko.