Word: struan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Opium War in 1841. Hong Kong. The plague. War junks. Tongs. China clippers sailing on the tide (and on nearly every page). May-may, a Chinese concubine who gargles baby urine. Gorth Brock, a bastardo degenerado. Wolfgang Mauss. Shevaun. The priapic painter Aristotle Quance. Redhaired, green-eyed, sharkproof Dirk Struan, Tai-Pan (Supreme Leader) of The Noble House, trader in poppies, mayhem...
...bestselling first novel King Rat, James Clavell may have been only clearing his throat for this one, which seems every bit as long as it is. Its narrative pace is numbing, its style is deafening, its language penny dreadful. All the characters whirl like dervishes, especially Dirk Struan, a kind of Scottish superman who can borrow $5,000,000 in silver ingots from an Oriental tycoon, invent binoculars, and corner the world supply of cinchona bark, all without breathing very hard. Well, almost. His Scots accent wavers a bit under stress: "Damned if he'll get away with...