bio notes:
born: 10/10/1924
died: 9/6/1994
born as: James Clavell

Author of popular action novels that portray Asian cultures. Initially a writer of screenplays, Clavell based his first novel, King Rat (1962), on his experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II. Struggles for power and wealth and secondarily, sex and love occupy his fiction, as East and West and male and female clash. Other Clavell novels include Tai-Pan (1966) and Noble House (1981), set in historic and modern Hong Kong; Shogun (1975), set in 17th-century Japan; Whirlwind (1986), set in Iran during its 1979 revolution; and Gia-Jin (1993), set in 19th-century Japan. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature