Tai-Pan is Chinese for Supreme Leader: he who wields the power. Here is a monumental achievement in storytelling by the author of the widely acclaimed best-seller King Rat. Dirk Struan is Tai-Pan of The Noble House, the most powerful and most feared trading company in the Orient. For twenty years Struan has been obsessed by a grand design-the conversion of a barren island called Hong Kong into a jewel of the British Empire. When Hong Kong is ceded to England by China in the wake of the first Opium War, Struan alone understands the island's potential. Its harbor, the finest in the world, is indispensable to the further expansion of British trade in the Far East. And Hong Kong is the steppingstone to China, the colossal enigma which Struan intends to fathom and bring into the family of nations as a great power. In this turbulent, panoramic novel James Clavell narrates the saga of how Struan, with majestic vision, ruthless will and ingenious grasp of command, will be the development of a colony destined to influence the course of history. Some wear to dust cover but book is in otherwise great condition.