Items related to Fragrant Harbour
Fragrant Harbouris the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia's last seventy years. Tom Stewart leaves England just before it is hit by the Great Depression to seek his fortune, and finds it in running Hong Kong's best hotel. Sister Maria is a beautiful and uncompromising Chinese nun whom Stewart meets on the boat out from England;their friendship spans decades and changes both their lives. Dawn Stone is an English journalist who becomes the public face of money and power and big business. Matthew Ho is a young Chinese entrepreneur whose life has been shaped by painful choices made long before his birth, and who is now facing his own difficulties, and opportunities, in the twenty-first century.The novel's shape and scale, its emotional power and beauty, make it John Lancaster's finest book to date.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
In his new novel Fragrant Harbour John Lanchester, as in his previous books, shows an impressionist's gift for adopting different voices for his narrator. The moral hedonist Tarquin Winot who tells his story in The Debt to Pleasure and the downsized suburbanite whose inner monologues provide the material for Mr Phillips could hardly be more contrasting characters, yet Lanchester makes both equally convincing.
Review:
In Fragrant Harbour much of the story is told in the words of Tom Stewart, a young Englishman who sails to Hong Kong in the 1930s and ends up spending the rest of his long life there. The voice of Stewart--reserved, humane and understated--is as finely achieved as those in the earlier novels. Through his eyes we see Hong Kong's 20th-century history. The class-ridden and racially divided society of the 1930s is given the brutal awakening of the Japanese occupation. After the war, the old Hong Kong disappears and the city is transformed by economic boom and entrepreneurial energy. The approaching return of the city to mainland China brings its own problems, anxieties and upheavals.
Against this backdrop, Stewart's life, and particularly his relationship with Maria, a Chinese nun he first meets as he is travelling out from England in 1935, unfolds. Lanchester intertwines personal histories and the city's history with great skill, showing how the past lives on, even in a city as resolutely modern as Hong Kong. The narrator of the book's last section, a young businessman called Matthew Ho, may be the embodiment of the new Hong Kong but, as he knows himself, his life has been decisively marked by the old. --Nick Rennison
This is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia's last 70 years. Tom Stewart leaves England just before the Great Depression to seek his fortune, and finds it in running Hong Kong's best hotel. Sister Maria is an uncompromising Chinese nun whom Stewart meets on the boat out from England; their friendship spans decades and changes both their lives. Dawn Stone is an English journalist who becomes the public face of money and power and big business. Matthew Ho is a young Chinese entrepreneur whose life has been shaped by choices made long before his birth. The complacency of colonial life in the 1930s, the horrors of the Japanese occupation; the post-war transformation of Hong Kong; the growth of the Triads - all are present in Lanchester's epic novel.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherFaber & Faber
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0571201768
- ISBN 13 9780571201761
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages320
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
£ 13.69
Shipping:
£ 14.91
From Canada to U.S.A.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Seller Image
Fragrant Harbour
Published by
Faber & Faber
(2002)
ISBN 10: 0571201768
ISBN 13: 9780571201761
New
Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbor presents a traditional colonial narrative set in the 1930s and 1940s inside a larger, dizzyingly complex tale of big business at the turn of the 21st century. Lanchester's main character, Tom Stewart, is a Kentish lad who journeys to the exotic Far East in 1935, just as the commercial prospects of Hong Kong are becoming apparent. On his voyage out, Tom is made the object of a curious bet between a Chinese nun and language teacher, Sister Maria, and an anti-Catholic English businessman. As a result, he becomes proficient in Cantonese with only six weeks' study. This skill, unusual in an Englishman, is the making of Tom's career. Although they part on bad terms, Sister Maria remains a shimmering figure on the periphery of Tom's life in Hong Kong, and their one thought as the Japanese invade the region is to protect each other.Lanchester was raised in Hong Kong (his grandparents had settled there in the 1930s and been interned by the Japanese during the war), and his insider view of the place is about as far from the small, lyrical Western-Asian novels of recent years as can be imagined. The broad scope and jerking pace of Fragrant Harbor can be disconcerting, but they vividly convey the shifting fortunes and alliances of this crowded, corrupting, and much-contested territory. --Regina Marler. Seller Inventory # 010234
Buy New
£ 13.69
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fragrant Harbour
Published by
Faber & Faber Ltd
(2002)
ISBN 10: 0571201768
ISBN 13: 9780571201761
New
Hardcover
Quantity: 2
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # VIB0571201768
Buy New
£ 30.67
Convert currency
Stock Image
Fragrant Harbour
Published by
Faber and Faber Ltd.
(2002)
ISBN 10: 0571201768
ISBN 13: 9780571201761
New
Hardcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 320. Seller Inventory # 7638671
Buy New
£ 108.51
Convert currency