The Great Fire (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Shirley Hazzard
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1947-1948
- Setting: Japan, Hong Kong, England, and New Zealand
- Principal Characters: Aldred Leith, Peter Exley, Brigadier General Driscoll, Helen Driscoll, Benedict Driscoll, Oliver Leith
- Genres: Long fiction, War fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Love or romance, Twentieth century, 1940’s, World War II, Despair, Hope, England or English people, War, Death or dying, London, Letters, Atomic bomb, Japan or Japanese people, New Zealand or New Zealanders
- Locales: England, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand
The Great Fire is concerned not with the difficulties of war, but with the difficulties of peace. Shirley Hazzard explores the effects of war on both the victors and the vanquished and the necessity, “in the wake of so much death, . . . to assemble life.” While war allows fate to direct one’s destiny, when war ends, destiny is once more in the hands of each individual. As the novel’s hero realizes, “Peace forces us to invent our future selves.”
The novel opens in 1947, as British war hero Aldred Leith arrives on the Japanese island of Ita Siwa, near Hiroshima,...
[The entire page is 1711 words long]
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