In 1841, an Englishman and a Chinaman worked together to secure English rights to the Chinese island of Hong Kong. Only a few years later both were dismissed from their posts, the one (in theory) for getting something of too little worth, the other for getting too little for it….

The historical Englishman and the Chinaman are turned most freely into second-rank characters in ["Tai-Pan"], James Clavell's long-drawn-out novel of those turbulent days [of Hong Kong's early development]. In the foreground are the greedy dealers in tea and opium: a couple of deadly foes from England and an American. The book takes its title from the English big-shot (or Tai-Pan), Dirk Struan. (p. 38)

[There is a multitude of] cutthroat business operations, and throats aplenty are cut. That is not the bloodiest part of the novel. A succession of pitfalls, treacheries, piracies, infidelities, murder, rape and whoring constitute the nonstop...