He is immediately enchanted, however, by the couple's children-a brilliant, sickly young man and his adoring sister-who prove to be prisoners in a different sort of conflict. In 1947, a thirty-two-year-old English war hero visiting Hiroshima during the occupation finds himself billeted in a compound overseen by a boorish Australian brigadier and his scheming wife. The fire of the title refers primarily to the atomic bombing of Japan, but also to the possibility of transcendent passion in its aftermath. Hierarchies of feeling, perception, and taste abound in her writing, and this novel-her first in more than twenty years-takes on the very notion of what it means to be civilized. Hazzard is nothing if not discriminating. At times the narrator follows Peter Exley, an Australian friend of Leith's who is investigating Japanese war crimes, and Helen Driscoll, an Australian teenager with whom Leith falls in love while billeted in Japan. Written in the third-person narrative, the novel principally follows its protagonist, the decorated British war veteran Aldred Leith, who is travelling through post-war Asia to write a book. The novel commences in Japan in 1947, and subsequently takes in Hong Kong, England and New Zealand. The novel was Hazzard's first since The Transit of Venus, published in 1980. National Book Award for Fiction and a Miles Franklin literary award (2004). The Great Fire (2003) is a novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |