James Clavell (Charles Edmund DuMaresq de Clavelle) (October 10 1924 – September 7 1994) was a novelist and screenwriter, famous for books such as Shogun and films such as The Great Escape and To Sir, with Love.

Life Account

Clavell was born in Sydney, Australia in 1924. His father was an officer in the Royal Navy, so Clavell was raised in many different places within the British Commonwealth. In 1940 he joined the British Royal Artillery and was sent to Malaysia to fight the Japanese. Wounded by machine gun fire, he was eventually captured and sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp on Java. Later, he was transferred to Changi Prison near Singapore. His experiences there became the basis of his first novel, King Rat, published in 1962.

By 1946 Clavell had risen to the rank of Captain, but a motorcycle accident ended his military career. He enrolled at the University of Birmingham, where he met April Stride , an actress, who he married in 1951. Through her, Clavell was introduced to the movie industry, and developed a desire to be a director. He moved with his family to New York in 1953 where he worked in television, and soon thereafter to Hollywood. Eventually he earned success as a screenwriter with films such as The Fly and Watusi. He co-wrote and produced the classic film The Great Escape, which firmly established his reputation in Hollywood. By 1959 he was producing and directing films of his own.

In 1963, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He died of stroke following cancer in Switzerland in 1994.

The Asian Saga

After publishing King Rat in 1962, Clavell returned to novels with Tai-Pan in 1966. Set during the founding period of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan became the model for Clavell's later novels, which involve a large number of characters and numerous loosely interwoven plots. Characters and families from one novel often appear in others, separated by as many as 400 years. Many of the novels follow the history of Struans, a trading company, based on the actual company Jardine Matheson.

These novels, taken together, were officially known as The Asian Saga. The main theme tying these books together is the meeting of Western civilization and East Asian civilization after the Age of Discovery and up to modern times.

Clavell is sometimes called one of the first multiculturalists. Although he did not call himself a cultural relativist, he attempted to admire Asian cultures by their own standards rather than viewing them through a Western lens. He often implied that the West has a great deal to learn from the East.

His protagonists are Westerners (mainly Britons) brought to Asia for commercial purposes. Clavell was a believer in the benefits of free trade between nations, seeing it not as a form of exploitation but as as a means of bringing different cultures together by binding them together in common interest. Because of this, there is no anti-imperialism in Clavell's works.

It may be said that the real protagonists in Clavell's novels are not the characters, but the time and place; the characters are the canvas on which Clavell illustrates a culture.

Screenplays

• The Fly (1958)
• Watusi (1959)
• Five Gates to Hell (1959) (also directed)
• Walk Like a Dragon (1960) (also directed)
• The Great Escape (1963)
• 633 Squadron (1964)
• The Satan Bug (1965)
• To Sir, with Love (1966) (also directed)
• The Sweet and the Bitter (1967) (also directed)
• Where's Jack (1968) (also directed)
• The Last Valley (1970) (also directed)
• Shogun - miniseries (1980)
• Shogun - film (1981)
• Noble House - miniseries (1988)

Novels

'The Asian Saga'

• Shogun (1975): Set in feudal Japan, 1600.
• Tai-Pan (1966): Set in Hong Kong, 1841.
• Gai-Jin (1993): Set in Japan, 1862.
• King Rat (1962): Set in Japanese POW camp, 1945.
• Noble House (1981): Set in Hong Kong, 1963.
• Whirlwind (1986): Set in Iran, 1979.

Other books include:

• The Children's Story (1980)
• The Art of War a translation of Sun Tzu's famous book (1983)
• Thrump-O-Moto (1986)
• Escape (1994)

External link