The Time of the Dragons — Alice Ekert-Rotholz

This absorbing novel of a group of Europeans in the Far East, spanning the past thirty years, carries the reader along at a breathless pace through adventure, intrigue, terror, and deep emotion. It follows the careers of a Norwegian diplomat and his three daughters, each by a mother of different nationality, and of the Orientals, French, White Russians, and Americans with whom their lives become enmeshed. Each daughter in turn is involved in a love affair that responds to the mounting tensions of the times. Plots and counterplots abound; spies and suspected spies are on every hand; bombs fall -- but life goes on. As the Japanese make their relentless way, and as the tide swings back to engulf them, we witness through the story of the three girls the passing of an old order and the unfolding of a new.

In presenting this cosmopolitan galaxy of fascinating individuals, the author has done a high-level service to the cause of fiction. Already a great success in several European countries, this novel in its lively American translation should reach a large new audience.

A Literary Guild Selection