It is a story about a Canadian soldier, George MacDonell who was sent to Hong Kong and fought with the Japanese during the World War II. In this book MacDonell started with how he became a Canadian soldier and then described how he was sent to the Pacific War zone during the World War II. When the Canadian army lost the battery in Hong Kong, he became the prisoner of War. He depicted how the Japanese in the Prison of War camp in Hong Kong, then Japan treated him and other soldiers. After years in the prison, he was eventually released in the year of 1945. He then described how he struggled through and became a successful businessman. It is an excellent memoir. The only minor "mistake" is the inconsistent of the names of the place. For instance, the Hong Kong Tai Tam Reservoir sometimes is romanized as "Ty Tam Reservoir." Other than that, the book is well written and organized.

I am english and third generation Hong Konger, I bought the book to find out more about what my grandfather went through. The book moved me in the hardest way. I thought that it was one of the best history books that I have read so far in the last two years.

The cruelty and depravity demonstrated by the Japanese during their occupation of Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945 is one of the less well-documented chapters of the Second World War. Yet, as George Wright-Nooth demonstrates with such freshness and clarity in this autobiographical account, it is as great a story of heroism, endurance, and poignancy as any other of its time. The image of 33 individuals, British, Chinese and Indian, preparing to be executed by beheading, and being comforted from among their own group by an Sandhurst-trained Indian officer and a Hong Kong Chinese man leading prayers will long remain in the mind. What also brings the book to life are the diary extracts and the author's excellent memory for detail, which superbly capture the sense of a young Englishman caught in the sweep and suffering of a wider tragedy, but somehow retaining his spirit, his inquisitiveness and that uniquely British sense of humour that shines undimmed through fifty years and the terrible things he saw and experienced.

I read this book with my 8 year old son, we both really enjoyed it. Well written and cleverly entwining Tze Yan's homework into the story, this book offers a view into the weekend of a girl my son's age living in Hong Kong. It is full of interesting facts and ideas...things an 8 year old would think of, as well as fun pictures that capture lots of details.

This is an extract of a review of 'Staging Hong Kong' published in 'The UTS Review: Cultural Studies and New Writing' 5(2), Nove 1999, pp209-212. The reviewer is Mandy Thomas.

'Rozanna Lilley's book 'Staging Hong Kong' is a work which can be defined in every dimension as being 'hot'. As a result of the repercussions of global political and social change, anthropology has been forced to continually reposition itself dynamically through the successive establishmnet of innovative research practices and canons. This book is one of those books which we look to in order to redefine the discipline because it is 'hot' at so many levels, heralding new forms of cultural analysis. It's hot because it articulates an entirely new understanding of cultural productions, it's optimistic and vibrant, brilliantly crafted and seductively humorous, and it's hot because it is very much of the moment in terms of the global issues it deals with, and also because it's about a very cool group of people... 'Staging Hong Kong' is fascinating and exquisitely written. It's brimming with ideas about colonisation, cultural marginality, gender and sexual politics, social differentiation, and the dilemmas of being caught in a culturally and historically huge moment like the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. In academic literature there is presently a palpable malaise around the subjects of globalisation, nationalism and retrospectives on the century we are farewelling. By returning to a study of the intersection of culture and politics, Lilley eclipses many of the wearying contemporary speculations on the conjunctions between the local and the global and offers us an opportunity to reflect on the ongoing problem of the relationship of art to life.

I am a girl age 17, and I read this book for the first time when I was 15, since then I've read it several times. For unknown reasons it has continued to intrigue me and draw me back. It is a great romantic novel, and a great christian novel. I like the fact that I learn more about Hongkong, I like the plot in the story and first and foremost I like the main characters. My mother who is turning 45 this year, also loved it, and all of Marilyn Kok's books and she is wondering. Is there coming more?

I had the chance to get into the classes "American Diplomatic History I and II" taught by Professor Tucker. This book is exactly reflects her outstanding teaching skills: it clear, very well documented and a real intellectual delight.

This book is a major achievement. Detailed consideration of cases and memoranda, with sensitivity to their legal and administrative minutiae, brings out the interplay of large forces, all of them changing in relation to each other. He shows the importance of global forces, of the conversion of the Hong Kong economy into an advanced market-capitalist centre, of a colonial regime moving from a paternal imperialist to a powerful arbiter of profit-taking local interests and of Cold War strategy with pragmatic (mutually beneficial) arrangements with the mainland Communist government, and of the transformation of landholding and kinship by New Territory residents from surface-sub-soil bundles of rights to relations transformed by immigration of new settlers and urban migration of old in which the nature of land changes without disturbing ties to land. He achieves his aim to show that what are usually studied as phenomena isolated from each other, namely the kinship organisations of the New Territories, the laissez-faire and indirect rule of Hong Kong, and globalisation of politics and economy were not isolated, but formed in relation to each other locally and in basic ways. He shows successfully that the descriptions of each have been stereotyped.

The book is a contribution to historical anthropology, questioning and rethinking the way 'custom' has been an object first of transformation when it is preserved by a rationalising ordinance and then of negotiation and misunderstanding, as well as a preserve of indigenous subjects adapting themselves to fiercely competitive change. It is a contribution to the history of the ways in which the British colonial doctrine of indirect rule has been implemented. Finally, within these achievements, it is a reappraisal of the post-war anthropology of kinship, in the New Territories and elsewhere, while bringing together a great many individual studies. To them he adds his own enquiries into a number of Hakka villages in the NT. Again this is done with great sensitivity, this time to the participants' usage of terms and their misunderstanding when translated into English as 'family' or 'lineage'. The major theoretical result of this reappraisal is to dissolve the British social-structural problematic of local solidarity carried by lineage trusts and local lineage segments, and to demonstrate that the formation of trusts is an individual's will to his patri-descendants, distinct from the transmission of worship and of common substance down a patriline, and also from the general obligation to continue to look after the dead, and that all these are distinct from the incorporation of a family or of a village in a present situation which includes the formation of villages as communities in different and specifiable historical conjunctures (Ming dynasty as distinct from pre-Ming, British colony pre-war and post-war, etc.).

In short, this book is bound to be a major contribution to the anthropology of China and to the historical anthropology of British colonial rule, its basic assumptions and how some of the same assumptions were inflected through British anthropology.

Edward Cline has invented an action hero for todays men of the mind. In this neo-non-spy thriller, the hero, Merrit Fury takes on anti-capitalist evildoers with satisfying adeptness and a moral certainty normally reserved for Ayn Rand heros.

This is truly refreshing work -- I would love to see a sequal to this one. Meanwhile, I just bought Cline's book "Sparrowhawk" from Paper Tiger books and am looking forward to more great writing.

Noble House is undoubtedly Clavell's greatest work. Although Tai-pan, Shogun and King Rat are excellent books in their own right, Noble House keeps the reader enthralled to the last page. Tai-pan makes good reading in itself and serves as a prequel to Noble House. However, it is not necessary to read Tai-pan before Noble House. I did not but I still found this work exciting. The plots - CIA versus KGB versus PRC Intelligence versus MI-5/MI-6, Gornt versus Dunross versus Bartlett, Orlanda versus Casey and a variety of characters (other than those already mentioned), makes the 1400 plus pages light work - it is truly a classic by an author with deep insights in the culture and international relations of Hong Kong and its neighbours and trading partners. The boardroom drama is intense and Clavell leaves the reader guessing who will emerge winner until the end. I recommend this book to anyone.

Set 120 years after the events of Tai-Pan, Ian Dunross is the latest in Dirk Struan's line to head Struan's, also known as the Noble House. To survive, Struan's always skates the financial edge, and Quillan Gornt, descendant of Dirk's enemy, Tyler Brock, is quite happy to push it over the edge.

Even though we meet many fine characters, from American businesswoman Casey Tcholok to smuggler's son Paul Choy, Hong Kong itself is really the star of this novel. Seeming almost anarchic at times, the colony (as it then was, the novel is set in 1963) and its people, Chinese and British, seem to worship one god, Money.

Clavell ties in references to his other novels--characters from King Rat show up and relive their wartime hatred, many of the characters discuss and live out the heritage of Tai-Pan, and a Japanese character mentions briefly the events of Shogun.

This is the sort of book that will keep you up reading until 4 a.m.

What I didn't like: I found the character of Peter Marlowe most annoying. He shows up all the time, acts like a know it all, and is really Clavell's way of writing himself into the book. Also, about six different times, it is mentioned that the U.S. is starting to get involved in Vietnam, and each time, a precient character chirps (or at least thinks) that the U.S. will regret it. Hindsight is 20/20, the novel was published in 1981.

A good read.

Like all of Clavell's books since 1980, I bought Noble House the moment I knew it was available. Unfortunately, that was during a week of law school finals. Although I finished the thousand pages in a few days, my grades turned out to be a full level below all my other semesters. That's how spellbinding Noble House is. This book is certainly top rate in terms of plot, suspense and characters in its own right, but what bound me to it during all my spare time was the interrelationship with the characters from Clavell's previous Hong Kong novel, Tai Pan and, to a lesser extent, King Rat. The same was true later with Whirlwind and Gai Jin, neither of which gathered a speck of dust in the bookstore before I bought it. Even today, I mourn over the fact that Clavell didn't live long enough to write another 2 or 3 books in his series. I have never read any other author who leaves so many questions unanswered and so many critical issues unresolved, but does so in a way that feeds the curiosity so strongly rather than disappointing. It is a tribute to Clavell's monumental skill as a storyteller that this is a strength of his novels rather than a major irritant to his readers. Very few of those readers stopped at one Clavell novel and, as far as I know, almost everyone who has read one goes on to read all the rest. Unlike so many of today's authors, he writes about heroes who aren't made of cardboard and who hold genuine mystery no matter how closely they are observed.