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Fragrant Harbour
 
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Fragrant Harbour (Paperback)

by John Lanchester (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
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Price For All Three: £22.07

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Product details

  • Paperback: 396 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (5 Jun 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 057121469X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571214693
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 79,218 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #1 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > L > Lanchester, John
    #28 in  Books > Fiction > World > Chinese

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk 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.

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 text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
'There's a depth and emotional candour here that, long after you have finished the book, is hard to forget... Fragrant Harbour is really a love letter to Hong Kong, redolent with the bright shine of romance and nostalgia for the indefinable essence of a place.' Observer 'Provides both the detail and panorama of a fascinating city... it has a cracking emotional thrust.' Financial Times

This novel from the author of Mr Phillips and The Debt to Pleasure encompasses 70 years of Asian history and four very different but subtly connected lives. Dawn Stone, a British journalist, soon to become head of media liaison for one of the most powerful businessmen in Hong Kong, begins the narrative with the convincingly uncompromising tone of a new breed of successful businesswomen. This gives way to a deft change in style and tempo as the story is taken up by Tom Stewart, a courageous and thoughtful Englishman, as he leaves the family pub in Kent just before the great Depression to make his fortune running the best hotel in Hong Kong. The colony will become his lifelong home despite the horrors of the Japanese invasion and internment and the atrocities of the Triads. His close and enduring friendship with a beautiful nun named Sister Maria forms the lynchpin of the novel. It is testament to Lanchester's technical mastery that, with only one page of her own narrative, the brave and dignified Maria is the pivotal character in the book, her short contribution providing the key to the relationships which connect the characters. Finally, a Chinese entrepreneur, Matthew Ho, brings us back to the harsh realities of modern-day Hong Kong as he struggles to keep his successful company afloat following the handing back of the colony to China in 1997 and in the face of endemic corruption. Despite the huge scope of the novel, Lanchester has produced a book which, at some 300 pages in the hardback edition, is tightly structured and finely crafted. His elegant prose evokes vividly a place with its own unique character and history, whilst his beautifully observed characters create a moving and compelling plot. (Kirkus UK)

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Fragrant Harbour
75% buy the item featured on this page:
Fragrant Harbour 3.6 out of 5 stars (18)
£5.99
Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood
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The Debt to Pleasure
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A History of Hong Kong
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Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An engaging novel which just misses the mark, 23 April 2004
By Rivercassini "Rivercassini" (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
Fragrant Harbour has an ambitious concept - to chronicle Hong Kong fromthe 1930s up to and beyond the 1997 handover of the British-governeconomic miracle to China. Lanchester's literary conceit attempts to dothis through three characters, each with their own distinct voice but withintertwined stories. By far the most engaging section is that devoted toThomas Stewart, who as a young man sets out from his family home inFaversham, Kent to seek his fortune in the East, and the story of theclose and compelling relationship which develops between Tom and the youngChinese nun he meets on the ship on the way out.
A novel told with restraint and a surprisingly consistent tone and pace.Lanchester has broken away from the pretentiousness that marred his twoprevious novels, but there remains a certain emotional detachment from thestruggles and successes of the characters he has created. Through Tom, atypically restrained yet warm and likeable, English, Lanchester shows thathe can develop a character with depth. This makes it all the morefrustrating that other characters remain flatly two dimensional, somehowoddly hollow. Dawn Stone, the London journalist with whom the novel opens,is little more than stereotypical.
There is however real quality here. It is in the exquisite prose portraitof Hong Kong itself, perhaps in reality the central character. Superblydetailed, evocative and atmospheric, Hong Kong emerges as seething port,with layers upon layers of society sitting uncomfortably on the cuspbetween Eastern and Western cultures. It is no surprise to learn thatLanchester was born and brought up in the fragrant harbour of Hong Kong,and his deep affection for the exotic, complex city is inescapable onevery page.
The plot is subtlety and steadily delivered, with just enough pace tomaintain interest, but despite using the voices of the characters torelate it, it is difficult not to be aware of the author's controllinginfluence throughout. The prose is pitch perfect and the ending satisfyingbut the restrained characterisation and overly control plot preventFragrant Harbour from being the novel that it might have been. Lancesteris capable of a masterpiece. This isn't it, quite.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a masterpiece but a good weekend read for 'Gweilos', 31 Aug 2004
By A Customer
As a Brit who has spent several years in Hong Kong, I was looking for a short story with epic ambitions, a historical portrayal of the place I now call home. Well this book certainly delivered, and I enjoyed it more as the story unfolded. On reflection however, the book was let down by the weakness of the opening chapter. Not only was the portrayal of journalist Dawn Stone unconvincing, it also proved to be neither relevent nor closely connected to all that followed. I presume this section was intended as a means of initiating readers into the unfamiliar world of Hong Kong, but was it really necessary? My advice would be skim through the first 70 pages and focus on the more juicy core of the book; namely the exploits of Tom Stewart and his lasting relationship with Chinese nun Maria, spanning several decades of Hong Kong history. There is certainly enough here to keep you turning the pages, some rich narative, historical and social insights, well-timed twists and turns. I ended the book with a fresh perspective on Hong Kong, its people and its complexities.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A global idea, 25 May 2008
Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester is a novel that is hard to praise too highly. Set in Hong Kong, it presents the stories of four main characters, each of which is an immigrant to this city. Behind them at all times is a culture that rules their lives, sets the limits of what might be possible, but is always hard for outsiders to penetrate. That the culture affects all aspects of their lives, however, is a given.

Each character pursues self-interest, the different eras they inhabit defining and characterising the different stages of the city's development. Thus we see its pre-war emergence from a dirty nineteenth century right through to its contemporary role as a driving force of free market globalisation.

When Tom Stewart, on his way to Honk Kong in the 1930s, accepts the challenge of a wager, he changes the direction of lives, not just is own. A random, trivial suggestion suggests he might learn Cantonese in the thirty days of a shared voyage to new lives. His tutor is Sister Maria, a Chinese nun who proves to be an enlightened, motivating teacher. Tom Stewart learns the language, wins the bet and begins a relationship with things Chinese that will sustain him through war, peace, economic growth, professional life, clandestine activity and property speculation.

Dawn Stone, previously Doris, hails from Blackpool, but she makes it to Hong Kong. She has a career in the media, having gone through the once well trodden paths of learning her trade on provincial newspapers and then graduating to London. She makes it good and proper in the public relations business that booms out east. She seems to have few scruples and is ruled by pragmatism. She is not alone.

Michael Ho is a young businessman. He has a vision of an air conditioned future that is on a knife edge between success and failure. He is sub-contracted from Germans who operate north of London to avail themselves of the country's more flexible approach to labour. He has a rip-off sub-contracting factory in Ho Chi Minh City. He is Hong Kong based, but from Fujian, and thus also an immigrant. He has recently relocated his family to Sydney. Interests in Guangzhou will determine his fate. Mountains are high and the emperor is far away, his contacts tell him, so practices are mainly local. He must learn. He must raise capital. It is perhaps true everywhere in this global economy, where Hertfordshire taxi drivers remonstrate in Urdu and curse in English.

And it is pragmatism that rules the place. As globalisation becomes an issue, the place is the world, not just Hong Kong. In this new world which appears to be built on the professedly liberal economic ideas that have underpinned the colony's free-for-all, these immigrants to the place make their lives, make their fortunes in their own ways. But still there is a constant in that they can only succeed within the protective umbrella shade of bigger interests than their own. In a city state that grew out of an illicit and illegal trade in opium as British merchants and adventurers became international drug dealers to vulnerable China, people with wealth beyond measure push people around the chessboards of their interests, occasionally enthroning a pawn they might even have previously sacrificed.

As in A Debt To Pleasure, John Lanchester has us enter the world of an anti-hero. The character that drives events in Fragrant Harbour is but a name for most of the book. He is cold, calculating, driven by raw, undiluted self-interest. In this he is perhaps no different from anyone else. It's just that he is more successful at it, and thus less willing to risk that success. And he prevails. The emperor is far away. The mountains are high. In his case, he is the emperor and he owns the mountains. Power lives in pockets and, in a globalised economy, we are all immigrants, even in our homes. What a superb book!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Good idea, never convincingly realised
As a book about Hong Kong from the 1930s to the turn of the 21st Century this book could have been so interesting, indeed some parts are. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Adam Graham Malster

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read
This book is hugely enjoyable. It is well-written and interestingly constructed. It is also very atmospheric and thought-provoking. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Bookish

4.0 out of 5 stars So much to keep your interest
I had never read one of John Lanchester's books before, but was attracted to 'Fragrant Harbour' as it had Hong Kong at the centre of the novel. Read more
Published on 20 Jun 2007 by Cheshire Booklover

4.0 out of 5 stars A taste of Hong Kong
Whist reading Fragrant Harbour, I felt that I was actually in Hong Kong and a part of the story. The author has demonstrated his extensive knowledge and experience about the... Read more
Published on 1 Jul 2006 by P. DATTA

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but not Great
An interesting book, and a difficult one to review. Readers who know the Far East will react differently from those who do not. Read more
Published on 28 Jan 2004 by R. G. Mabbitt

5.0 out of 5 stars A very fragrant harbour!
Having spent a couple of years in HK - prior to the handover - I found a lot of the narrative very familiar and even the early 20th Century story managed to convey memories of a... Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2003 by David Maurice

4.0 out of 5 stars A measured & stylish novel which just missed the mark
Fragrant Harbour has an ambitious concept – to chronicle Hong Kong from the 1930s up to and beyond the 1997 handover of the British-govern economic miracle to China... Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2003 by Rivercassini

4.0 out of 5 stars 20thC Tai Pan
The rags to riches via Hong Kong storyline will be familiar to Clavell fans but this is an altogehter more gentle tale. Read more
Published on 15 Jul 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Hong Kong Novel ?
Hong Kong is the most frustrating, extraordinary, elusive and enigmatic place. It is an impossible blend of material and mystical, of oriental and western, old and new. Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2003 by Michael Barnes

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable if you know Hong Kong, but not a great novel
As someone who grew up in HK and is still fascinated by the place I had high hopes of this novel. In fact, although there is plenty of historical interest, it is ultimately... Read more
Published on 17 Jan 2003

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