<strong>The Great Fire</strong> is Shirley Hazzards first novel since The Transit of Venuswhich won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1981. The conflagr... » 

The Great Fire is Shirley Hazzards first novel since The Transit of Venuswhich won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1981. The conflagration ofher title is the Second World War. In wartorn Asia and stricken Europe menand women still young but veterans of harsh experience must reinvent theirlives and expectations and learn from their past to dream again. Some willfulfill their destinies others will falter. At the centre of the story abrave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and worldly achievement are notenough. His counterpart a young girl living in Occupied Japan and tending herdying brother falls in love and in the process discovers herself. In thelooming shadow of world enmities resumed and of Asias coming centrality inworld affairs a man and a woman seek to recover selfreliance balance andtenderness struggling to reclaim their humanity. «