"It is 1935 and Tom Stewart, a young Englishman with an almost visceral longing for adventure, has bought himself a cheap ticket to the complex, corrupt, and corrupting world of Hong Kong. Aboard the SS Darjeeling, he becomes the pawn in a wager between a bluff Yorkshire businessman and a Chinese missionary nun who bets she can teach Stewart Cantonese on the six-week voyage out.

What begins as a shipboard contest evolves into friendship, then turns into solace and a passion only individual vows can stanch.".

"Spanning seven decades, Fragrant Harbor moves from the intrigue and double-dealing of the 1930s, through the savagery of the Japanese occupation, to end in contemporary Hong Kong, crossroads of international trade and finance, and way station for laundering the dirty money of warlords, drug runners, and Chinese triads. John Lanchester depicts a tumultuous time and place, then peoples it with memorable characters.

Digging deep into the wellsprings of human emotion, he tells the story of a forbidden love whose repercussions echo across the years, surviving war, taboos, and even death."--BOOK JACKET.