Tai-Pan

James Clavell

Sep 2018 · Blackstone Publishing

About this ebook

“There can only be one Tai-Pan.”

Dirk Struan rose from humble beginnings to build Struan & Company, also known as the Noble House, into the world’s largest Far East trading company. He is now the Tai-Pan—Supreme Leader—of all Tai-Pans in China. Along the way, however, he made a powerful enemy. Tyler Brock, Struan’s rival from their early opium-smuggling days, also heads a large trading fleet, second in size only to Struan’s. But it is not only silks and spices that drive their mutual companies’ wealth—the opium trade is still booming. War between England and China might be over, but the hostilities remain. Struan and Brock come to control much of England’s trade with China yet neither can control their desires or their hatred of each other. Over the years, their two families will cross paths, threatening to rip both apart, with reverberations that will echo across the generations.

Struan must fight to save his company and his family, or risk seeing everything he has created destroyed at the hands of his sworn enemy. Ambition, political intrigue, and love and lust weave their way throughout the novel the New York Times called, “grand entertainment...packed with action...with blood and sin, treachery and conspiracy, sex and murder.” East and West come together in an opulent and intricately plotted narrative. A tour-de-force of historical fiction, rich in detail yet eminently readable, Tai-Pan will stay with you long after the final page.

Ratings and reviews

I remember first reading a part of this beauty in the laundry room of my parent's farm house. A couple of years older than Culum, I had been a self-made man for many years by that point. I didn't understand the insecurity that Clavell wrote into the younger Struan, the taipan-to-be. Doing my laundry on a Saturday aft all those years ago, I couldn't identify with the fear of not living up to the reputation of kin; everything I had in my life was made with my own hands, grit and sweat, and so I answered to no one. I thought the Dirk Struan character too much of an all-being swaggart in that first reading. But a life carved out beyond the plywood mill walls, experience built upon after consuming the Asian Saga, changed my opinion. Having traversed 25 years since that first reading, I know that I've come to see a similar wilting uncertainty in some, a courageous conviction in but a few. I better understand Culum's burden with this reading, and thus Dirk's heartfelt loneliness at the figerative helm. Such a good tale. Glad I revisited it.

One of my favorite books of all time, I read this the first time over forty years ago and have reread it numerous times since.

Best novel I've ever read many times - period

About the author

James Clavell (1921–1994) was a novelist, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. He is best known for his epic Asian Saga novels, which launched with the 1962 bestseller King Rat, and their televised adaptations. He also wrote screenplays for such films as The Great Escape and The Fly, and was a writer, director, and producer on To Sir, with Love. His books Shōgun, Noble House, Tai-Pan, and Whirlwind were #1 New York Times bestsellers.