James Clavell

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James Clavell , actually Charles Edmund DuMaresq de Clavelle , (born October 10, 1924 in Sydney , Australia , † September 6, 1994 in Vevey , Switzerland ) was a British-American novelist, screenwriter and director who lived in Germany primarily through his 1975 published and filmed in 1980 novel Shogun became known.

Life

Clavell was born in Sydney as the son of British naval officer Richard Charles and his wife Eileen Clavell, b. Collis was born and grew up in various Commonwealth countries . He described himself as "a semi-Irish Englishman with a few Scottish highlights, born in Australia, citizen of the United States with residence in California and Canada or elsewhere". In 1940, at the age of 16, Clavell entered the British Royal Regiment of Artillery and was sent to Malaysia to wage war against the Japanese Army . Wounded by machine gun fire, he was eventually taken prisoner of war and taken to a Japanese prison camp on Java . He was later transferred to the infamous Changi POW camp near Singapore . He processed his experiences in this camp in the 1962 novel King Rat (published in 1977 as the rat king ).

In 1946, Clavell left the army after an accident. At the University of Birmingham he met the actress April Stride, whom he married on February 20, 1951. In 1953 Clavell and his wife emigrated to the United States and settled in Hollywood. The daughters Michaela Fleur and Holly Jane emerged from the marriage.

He began writing film scripts and producing films in 1954. One of his greatest successes in Hollywood was the classic film The Great Escape (Eng. " Broken Chains ") from 1963, which directed by John Sturges with Steve McQueen , Richard Attenborough , James Coburn , James Garner , Charles Bronson and Donald Pleasence was filmed in the leading roles. Other film successes were his screenplay for The Fly (horror film with Vincent Price , 1958, German Die Fliege ) and 1967 To Sir, With Love (German Young Thorns ) with Sidney Poitier, Clavell also directed the film.

After the success of his first novel " Rattenkönig ", Clavell devoted himself increasingly to writing epic novels, all of which became bestsellers. In 1963 he became a US citizen.

In 1966 Tai Pan was published , a novel from the early days of the world metropolis Hong Kong . Tai-Pan became the model for the following novels with their large number of different characters and numerous, often loosely connected plots . Many characters and families appear in several of his novels, separated by only 400 years of time difference. For example, the novel Noble House , based on the story of an actual trading family , which deals with the fate of one of Hong Kong's largest and most powerful trading houses in the 20th century ( Jardine Matheson Holdings ), is the continuation of the novel Tai-Pan , which tells the story of founder Dirk Struan and tells the development of the crown colony. 1986 appeared with whirlwind , a story during the Islamic Revolution in Iran , the conclusion of the Asia saga.

In 1988 Clavell was the editor of the Chinese classic The Art of War by Sun Zu . He also wrote a foreword for this work and edited the original translation. The children's book Plumps-O-Moto , published in 1984, represents an excursion into a genre that is unfamiliar to him. The illustrated work mixes the fantastic with the author's usual Asian background with a disabled girl in Australia.

Clavell's novels are characterized by imaginative and yet highly realistic portrayals, which, in bright colors, bring a mostly long-forgotten era back to life. The real protagonists of the novels are not the characters themselves, but time and place. The figures are just the canvas on which Clavell brings distant cultures to life. James Clavell is considered one of the first Western authors to show the people of Asia as they see themselves, not through Western eyes.

James Clavell died in 1994 in Vevey , Switzerland to cancer .

James Clavell is the biological father of Petra Barret Brando, the adopted daughter of Marlon Brando .

Works

Books

Novels

in chronological order:

  • Shogun , set in Japan, in the 16th century.
  • Tai Pan , set in Hong Kong, 1841.
  • Gai-Jin , set in Japan, 1862.
  • The Rat King , set in Singapore, 1945.
  • Noble House Hong Kong , set in Hong Kong, 1963.
  • Cyclone , set in Iran, 1979.
Children's book

Filmography

  • 1958: The Fly (D)
  • 1959: Five Gates to Hell (D, R)
  • 1959: Watusi (D)
  • 1960: I bought a Chinese girl (Walk Like a Dragon) (D, R, P)
  • 1962: Broken Chains (D)
  • 1964: They called him King (King Rat) (L)
  • 1964: Kampfgeschwader 633 (633 Squadron) (D)
  • 1965: Secret agent Barrett intervenes (The Satan Bug) (D)
  • 1967: Junge Dornen (To Sir, with Love) (D, R, P)
  • 1971: The Last Valley (The Last Valley) (D, R, P)
  • 1980: Shogun (L, P)
  • 1986: Tai Pan (L)
  • 1988: Noble House (L, P)

(D) = script • (L) = literary source • (R) = director • (P) = producer

Ludography

Clavell provided the literary template for:

  • 1987: Tai-Pan, action strategy game
  • 1989: Shogun , Adventure

various

Today's Swire Group and Jardine Matheson Holdings form the basis for the novel trilogy (novels Tai-Pan, Gai-Jin and Noble House) by James Clavell.

literature

  • Gina Macdonald: James Clavell. A critical companion . Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 1996. ISBN 978-0-313-29494-5 .

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ http://www.filmreference.com/film/31/James-Clavell.html
  2. ↑ http://www.kritierter.de/James_Clavell
personal data
SURNAME Clavell, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Clavelle, Charles Edmund DuMaresq de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian novelist, screenwriter and director
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Sydney , Australia
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1994
Place of death Vevey , Switzerland