Iran, 1979. A handful of oil billionaires—and an endless mass of impoverished, desperate people. One spark is enough to ignite unrest, and yesterday’s luxury turns into a bloody reckoning… After the coup, the pro-Western regime of Shah Pahlavi collapses, and the country plunges into a “war of all against all,” where the great powers’ intelligence services spar and maneuver in their drive to keep control of Iranian oil. On alert: the House of the Watchful and the Noble— a powerful holding company tightly connected to the oil business. To get people and assets out of the country engulfed by revolution in time, the holding’s covert helicopter company prepares an unprecedentedly risky operation. There is no time: taking off from this “powder keg” is deadly, and success is possible only if all helicopters launch from their bases at the same time…
The novel Hurricane (1986) completes James Clavell’s “Asian Saga.” The author is sometimes criticized for disorderliness and a mixture of genres, but his insight cannot be denied: by depicting an explosive Iran of the late seventies, he seems to peer decades ahead.