Fragrant Harbor (Hardcover)

by John Lanchester (Author) "ONGEVITY CAN BE a form of spite..." (more)
Key Phrases: Hong Kong, Sister Benedicta, Sister Maria (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Two brilliant novels in one, John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbor presents a traditional colonial narrative set in the 1930s and 1940s inside a larger, dizzyingly complex tale of big business at the turn of the 21st century. Lanchester's main character, Tom Stewart, is a Kentish lad who journeys to the exotic Far East in 1935, just as the commercial prospects of Hong Kong are becoming apparent. On his voyage out, Tom is made the object of a curious bet between a Chinese nun and language teacher, Sister Maria, and an anti-Catholic English businessman. As a result, he becomes proficient in Cantonese with only six weeks' study. This skill, unusual in an Englishman, is the making of Tom's career. Although they part on bad terms, Sister Maria remains a shimmering figure on the periphery of Tom's life in Hong Kong, and their one thought as the Japanese invade the region is to protect each other.

Lanchester was raised in Hong Kong (his grandparents had settled there in the 1930s and been interned by the Japanese during the war), and his insider view of the place is about as far from the small, lyrical Western-Asian novels of recent years as can be imagined. The broad scope and jerking pace of Fragrant Harbor can be disconcerting, but they vividly convey the shifting fortunes and alliances of this crowded, corrupting, and much-contested territory. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Chance meetings that reverberate for seven decades and affect many lives drive the plot in British writer Lanchester's latest novel, a suspenseful and poignant triumph of storytelling and an atmospheric portrait of a fabled city. In 1935, young Englishman Tom Stewart sails to Hong Kong in search of adventure. During the six-week voyage, he is taught Cantonese by a young Chinese missionary nun, Sister Maria. Upon his arrival in Hong Kong, his proficiency in the language leads to a career as a hotel manager. When the Japanese invade, Sister Maria urges him to flee with her, but he's given his word that he'll work as an undercover agent for the British. After the war, which Tom spends mostly in the notorious Stanley prison, his life and Sister Maria's continue to entwine. Then she disappears, a victim of the crime triad run by the corrupt Wo family. Tom s recital of these events, brimming with wartime intrigue and with an undercurrent of repressed emotion, constitutes the main part of the narrative; it is bracketed by the only marginally less lethal conflicts of modern business, as introduced in the meeting, on an airplane in 1995, of Dawn Stone, an enterprising English journalist, and entrepreneur Matthew Ho, whose identity becomes clear in the last section of the novel. Lanchester steeps the narrative in vivid detail (having been raised in Hong Kong, he is intimately acquainted with the city), and the subtheme of money and its ultimate power over human destiny permeates the story. The reader s only cavil may be the ebbing of tension at the conclusion, which is narrated by the reticent Matthew. Yet the final irony, when it comes, is both bitter and sweet, an apt analogy to Heung gong, the fragrant harbor that smells of corruption and greed.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 342 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; First Edition edition (June 27, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399148663
• ISBN-13: 978-0399148668
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,476,250 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hong Kong exerts a siren song...it's all about layers here.", July 17, 2002

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

For anyone who has read Lanchester's other novels (the fiendishly clever Debt to Pleasure and the Walter Mittyish Mr. Phillips), this novel will come as a big surprise. Far more serious, complex, and traditional a novel than either of these others, it might even be considered old-fashioned in its grand-scale story-telling. Concerning itself with three generations of people who have succumbed to the siren's song of Hong Kong as a financial capital--and sometimes found her to be a fickle mistress--the novel is as much about the city and the personal connections one brings to business as it is about individuals.

"Longevity can be a form of spite," Tom Stewart announces at the beginning of the novel. Stewart, an old man at the end of the century, has spent almost sixty years working in the former colony. On his way to Hong Kong in the early `30's, Stewart was taught Chinese on shipboard by Sister Maria, with whom he remained in contact as they both began their vocations--he as a hotel manager and she as a missionary to the remote countryside--and throughout their years in Hong Kong. Enduring the upheavals of colonialism, the Chinese revolution, the Japanese occupation and subsequent World War II atrocities, and the postwar rise of drug trafficking, graft, corruption, and the triads, Sister Maria and Stewart separately experience the myriad influences affecting both everyday life and business life in China and Hong Kong. Their different responses to these influences reflect both the tumult and vibrancy of the community, and give a broad scope to Lanchester's vision. Dawn Stone, an ambitious journalist whose career in Hong Kong is encapsulated for fifty pages at the beginning of the novel (a mystifying digression, it seems, at first), plays a role at the end of the novel as the complexities of business life during the turnover become threatening.

Filled with local color and the kind of detail accessible only to someone who has grown up in a place, Lanchester's novel vitalizes Hong Kong's life in both its glories and its sleaziness. The characters vividly illustrate the attitudes common to the periods in which they appear, and the novel, which never loses sight of its goal to tell a good story well, is both exciting and enlightening. A big novel in scope and ambition, I found it entertaining and stimulating, a wonderful read. Mary Whipple

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intricately crafted, totally satisfying, October 17, 2002

By	"hkdragon2" (Oak Ridge, TN USA) - See all my reviews

I read John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbor both from the perspective of someone born and raised in Hong Kong of British descent, and someone extremely interested in the one-time colony's rich history. That combination uniquely qualifies me to appreciate the handful of novels that have dealt with the colony in recent years - and for the most part I have come away thoroughly disappointed.

That is not the case with Fragrant Harbor, however; where most authors show a complete lack of even basic geographic knowledge for the place - let alone how it works - Lanchester obviously knows his material. What he has done with this book is something truly stunning - he has carefully and tightly interwoven the real events, places and names in Hong Kong's history with his fictional characters and a touch of artistic license to create a story that not only entertains, but educates as well.

Fragrant Harbor is wholly satisfying on every level, and I can unreservedly recommend it to anyone interested in a well written story, a gripping read, or the subject matter itself - the lives and interactions of expatriates and refugees, both in Hong Kong and Asia in general.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Full Circle, December 4, 2002

By	Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the sparks of humor, "What do you say to a 900 pound gorilla with a machine gun?" ("Sir.") My appreciation for it grew after I'd finished my reading and was able to look back on it. Granted, it's not until the last 50 pages of the book that you begin to understand why the first section about Dawn Stone is there. Until the reading is complete, the novel seemed disjointed; but afterward, it seemed remarkably unified. I loved how the characters of the first and last sections set in the modern time completed the story of Tom Stewart. The historical novel which is the largest middle section of the book is incredibly fascinating. The unrequited love of Tom for Sister Maria that is never quite articulated but certainly implied is the emotional glue that holds the tale. In the end, Lancaster brings us to a full circle fulfilled in time. As readers, we gain a greater perspective that supercedes the point of view of any of the individual characters which is a remarkable feat. While the criticisms that there are better Hong Kong novels or that he could have more description might be true, I think Lancaster has masterfully done something different. He weaves the reader through the storylines and then pulls us out of them to give a greater sense of wholeness. If angels live centuries in service, then the readers' perspective comes closer to that more eternal viewpoint through this novel which is breathtaking. Bravo!