It's the 1960s and the world of advertising is coming alive - and it's an exciting world to be part of. Simon Wong, a Chinese-Australian and promising young advertising executive, is sent to Singapore to establish an office.
He finds himself thrust into an environment that is at once strangely familiar and profoundly different; one where the rules that govern behaviour - both in business and in personal life - differ wildly from what he is used to. And where all is not what it appears to be.
Under the veneer of the commercial world lie some shocking truths - of people smuggling, drug trafficking and murder. And Mercy B. Lord, the woman Simon falls for, is caught up in it.
From wartime Asian comfort houses to CIA spy rings, Bryce Courtenay takes us on a thrilling journey with a great love story at its heart.
Bryce Courtenay (born 14 August 1933) is a South African-born Australian novelist born in Johannesburg. He spent most of his early years in a small village in the Lebombo Mountains in South Africa's Limpopo province.
His novels are primarily set in either Australia, his adopted country, or South Africa, the country of his birth. His first book, The Power of One, was published in 1989 and, despite Courtenay's fears that it would never sell, quickly became one of Australia's best-selling books by any living author. The story has since been made into a film - as well as being re-released in a version fit for children to read. Bryce Courtenay is one of Australia's most commercially successful authors. However, only The Power of One has been published in the United States. Courtenay claims that this is because "American publishers for the most part have difficulties about Australia, they are interested in books in their own country first and foremost. However, we receive many e-mails and letters from Americans who have read my books and I am hoping in the future that publishers will recognize that there is a market for all my books in the U.S."
He came to Australia after being banned from returning to South Africa for starting a weekend school at the prestigious boys school he attended. He had met Benita (whom he later married and has three children with), who invited him to come to Australia. Bryce sadly passed away in 2012 after a battle with terminal gastric cancer.
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