The Great Fire (Hazzard Novel)

''The Great Fire'' (2003) is a novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and a Miles Franklin literary award (2004). The novel was Hazzard's first since '' The Transit of Venus'', published in 1980.

Overview

The novel commences in Japan in 1947, and subsequently takes in Hong Kong, England and New Zealand. Written in the third-person narrative, the novel principally follows its protagonist, the decorated British war veteran Aldred Leith, who is travelling through post-war Asia to write a book. At times the narrator follows Peter Exley, an Australian friend of Leith's who is investigating Japanese war crimes, and Helen Driscoll, an Australian teenager with whom Leith falls in love while billeted in Japan.

''The New Yorker'' wrote of the novel:

Hazzard is nothing if not discriminating. Hierarchies of feeling, perception, and taste abound in her writing, and this novel—her first in more than twenty years—takes on the very notion of what it means to be civilized. The fire of the title refers primarily to the atomic bombing of Japan, but also to the possibility of transcendent passion in its aftermath. In 1947, a thirty-two-year-old English war hero visiting Hiroshima during the occupation finds himself billeted in a compound overseen by a boorish Australian brigadier and his scheming wife. He is immediately enchanted, however, by the couple's children—a brilliant, sickly young man and his adoring sister—who prove to be prisoners in a different sort of conflict. In the ensuing love story, Hazzard's moral refinement occasionally veers toward preciosity, but such lapses are counterbalanced by her bracing conviction that we either build or destroy the world we want to live in with our every word and gesture.

Reception

According to Book Marks, generally from American publications, the book received a "positive" consensus, based on fifteen critic reviews: seven "rave", three "positive", and five "mixed". ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported on reviews from several publications with a rating scale for the novel out of "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish": ''Guardian'' and ''Spectator'' reviews under "Love It" and ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Independent On Sunday'', and '' TLS'' reviews under "Pretty Good" and ''Sunday Telegraph'' review under "Ok" and '' Times'' review under "Rubbish".

Awards

*National Book Award (USA), Fiction, 2003"National Book Awards – 2003"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
(With acceptance speech by Hazzard, introduction by Antonya Nelson (dead link 2012-03-27), and essays by Julie Barer and Cecily Patterson from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
*Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2004
*William Dean Howells Medal, 2005
;Runners up
* Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Fiction, 2004: finalist
*Booker Prize, 2004: longlisted
*Orange Prize for Fiction (UK), 2004: shortlisted
*International Dublin Literary Award, 2005: shortlisted

External links

Interviews

BBC Radio 4
- audio

''The Guardian''

Reviews

''The Asian Review of Books''

''The Economist''

''The Guardian''




* ttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/14/fiction.features ''The Observer''
ReviewsofBooks.com

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Great Fire, The
2003 Australian novels
Miles Franklin Award–winning works
National Book Award for Fiction–winning works
Fiction set in 1947
Novels set in Japan
Farrar, Straus and Giroux books
Japan in non-Japanese culture