Despite the enormous success of his Asian books, James Clavell … seems equally preoccupied at the moment with American politics…. Indeed, his "The Children's Story" … has the overtones of a campaign speech on foreign policy; the "speech" has already caused considerable controversy, and can now be expected to cause more. (p. 47)

He wrote it in one "magical" day, compared with an average of three years for each of his last two novels—but then "The Children's Story" is only 96 pages long …, and it is a padded 96 pages at that…. The story concerns a young, attractive, well-trained teacher who rather effortlessly wins the hearts and minds of her primary-school pupils, shortly after their homeland loses a war, and persuades them to tear the national flag into pieces. One reader's reaction was to suggest that Clavell would be more at home in Pravda. The John Birch Society called him un-American, and...