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The Great Fire

The Great Fire 1

A Novel

by Shirley Hazzard
Paperback
Publication Date: 01/06/2005
Miles Franklin Literary Award
1/5 Rating 1 Review

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THE GREAT FIRE is Shirley Hazzard's first novel since THE TRANSIT OF VENUS, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1981. The conflagration of her title is the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the centre of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in Occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.



In the looming shadow of world enmities resumed, and of Asia's coming centrality in world affairs, a man and a woman seek to recover self-reliance, balance, and tenderness, struggling to reclaim their humanity.
ISBN:
9781844080571
9781844080571
Category:
Second World War fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
01-06-2005
Publisher:
Little, Brown Book Group
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
320
Dimensions (mm):
195x127x21mm
Weight:
0.22kg
Shirley Hazzard

Born in Sydney in 1931 to a Welsh father and Scottish mother. After the end of the Second World War her father joined the Foreign Service and was posted in Hong Kong and there at the age of 16 Shirley Hazzard began working for the British Combined Intelligence Services before the family moved to New Zealand.

At twenty she moved to New York and there she worked for the United Nations throughout much of the 1950s, which included a posting to Naples, a city that became much loved by her. She married Francis Steegmuller, translator and biographer in 1963 and they divided their time between Italy and New York. They were introduced by Muriel Spark.

Shirley Hazzard wrote three non-fiction books including a memoir of her friendship with Graham Greene, Greene on Capri. Her last novel, The Great Fire, won the 2003 National Book Award for fiction and the Miles Franklin Award, was shortlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction (then called The Orange) and named a Book of the Year by The Economist. She died on December 12 2016 aged 85.

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You can find this item in:

War & combat fiction Historical Fiction Classic fiction Romance Miles Franklin Literary Award Second World War fiction
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The Great Fire is the 5th novel by Australian author, Shirley Hazzard. Set firstly in immediate post-war Japan and Hong Kong, then in England and New Zealand, this is the story of Aldred Leith, author, researching a book on China and Japan and Peter Exley, solicitor and fine art enthusiast, investigating Japanese war crimes. Leith encounters, whilst researching Hiroshima, a brother and sister, Ben and Helen Driscoll. Ben has a condition which is slowly killing him. Helen is on the cusp of adulthood. Essentially a love story, this novel is filled with beautiful, descriptive prose, but builds very slowly and Hazzard seems somewhat detached from her characters. Her love of literature is apparent. I liked the device Hazzard used to indicate thoughts during dialogue. this is what he said, and what he thought as he was saying it, and what else he said. It certainly made me pay attention to the quotation marks. As with the Transit of Venus, this novel is beautifully written and lovers of language will enjoy the experience. I found the plot and the characters much better than Transit and overall, certainly a more satisfying novel than The Transit of Venus.

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