James Clavell was born in Sydney, the son of a Royal Navy officer. In the Second World War he served as a British Army artillery officer, was captured by the Japanese and held at Changi prison in Singapore. He later became a naturalized American. Before he was a famous novelist he worked in film: he co-wrote The Fly (1958) and The Great Escape (1963) and directed To Sir, with Love (1967). He died in Switzerland in 1994.
His fiction is the Asian Saga, six long novels published between 1962 and 1993. They follow Europeans who land in Asia, and what the meeting does to both sides. The books keep returning to survival, honour and the pursuit of power. They are crowded, fast and plotted like thrillers, with big casts and shifting loyalties. Changi, which he fictionalized in King Rat, was clearly where much of this began.
Shogun (1975) is the one that made his name. It takes its starting point from William Adams, the Englishman who became an adviser to Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Britannica reports that Clavell spent two years researching Japanese history and culture for it. NBC turned it into a five-night miniseries in 1980 with Richard Chamberlain. The 2024 FX adaptation became the first non-English-language series to win the Emmy for best drama. Clavell also received honorary doctorates from the University of Bradford and the University of Maryland.
Start with Shogun. The shipwrecked pilot John Blackthorne and the lord Toranaga make a self-contained story, and the novel is set in 1600, earlier than the rest of the saga, so you need no other book first. If you want something shorter and closer to Clavell's own experience, try King Rat. If Shogun's politics and trade appeal to you, move on to Tai-Pan.
