However, the same trick doesn't work as well here, with the use of pidgin English, Struan's thick Scots accent, and the poor English of the pirate-traders like Brock or Scragger. I loved 'Shogun', the first of James Clavell's asia saga however, I loved it partly because I love Japan, so 'Tai-Pan', set in Hong Kong for the most part, was never going to fare as well.I loved the way, in 'Shogun', that Clavell used the Japanese language, teaching his readers simple words and then no longer providing a translation for them, once they became familiar enough. A tour-de-force of historical fiction, rich in detail yet eminently readable, Tai-Pan will stay with you long after the final page. 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. 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. Over the years, their two families will cross paths, threatening to rip both apart, with reverberations that will echo across the generations. 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. War between England and China might be over, but the hostilities remain. But it is not only silks and spices that drive their mutual companies’ wealth-the opium trade is still booming. Tyler Brock, Struan’s rival from their early opium-smuggling days, also heads a large trading fleet, second in size only to Struan’s. Along the way, however, he made a powerful enemy. He is now the Tai-Pan-Supreme Leader-of all Tai-Pans in China. The sweeping epic novel of the founding of Hong Kong, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author and unparalleled master of historical fiction, James Clavellĭirk Struan rose from humble beginnings to build Struan & Company, also known as the Noble House, into the world’s largest Far East trading company.

Tai pan book series