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A carregar... James Clavell's Tai-Pan (original 1966; edição 1988)
Informação Sobre a ObraTai-Pan por James Clavell (1966)
A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. I still like Shogun better but Tai-Pan is a very close second. Don't let the size scare you. Just read it. ( ) A doorstopper of a novel that doesn't rise to the heights of Shogun. It's engaging and quite fun, but the length makes it hard to justify, compared to other historical novels. It relies quite a bit on repetition of the same themes and phrases by God and it's easy to see how you could cut it down severely without really compromising the contents. The novels chauvinistic and imperialist aspects might stand out to a modern reader but considering the time it was written and the period it's about, it's quite progressive. In 1841, British forces are setting up shop on Hong Kong, and Dirk Struan, leader of the all-powerful Noble House trading firm, is at the forefront of knitting China and Great Britain inextricably together. Unfortunately, most of his family has just succumbed to plague in Scotland, his lone surviving son Culum resents his father and can't be trusted to rule Noble House, his arch-nemesis Brock is trying to destroy him, his Chinese bastard Gordon Chen is secretly involved with the Triad anarchists, the British government is skeptical of Hong Kong's value, other European powers are trying to disrupt British plans, the Chinese mandarins keep trying to violently dislodge the traders from Hong Kong, and the other traders are developing alliances and betrayals at lightning speeds. Oh, and Struan's young Chinese mistress really wants to get married. In theory, this is exactly the kind of sprawling book that I love. Unfortunately, nearly all the Western-Eastern cultural interactions are inevitably reduced to "foreigners are strange, but I will allow them to continue in their misguided ways while I smirk from within my invincible cultural superiority." Which I'm sure happened in 1841 -- it's not as if Hong Kong was settled in the name of universal brotherhood -- but the book is so desperate to convey the point that it bludgeons the reader with redundant scenes. Clavell, we get it. But, wait! Clavell wants to puncture this kind of ethnocentric isolation as much as he wants to portray it, so he makes Dirk Struan into a near-messianic figure of tolerance and understanding. Struan really is settling Hong Kong in the name of universal brotherhood. In short: eh. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
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"It is the early 19th century, when European traders and adventurers first began to penetrate the forbidding Chinese mainland. And it is in this exciting time and exotic place that a giant of an Englishman, Dirk Straun, sets out to turn the desolate island of Hong Kong into an impregnable fortress of British power, and to make himself supreme ruler-- Tai-Pan!"--P. [4] of cover. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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