Fire from the Sun is a novel in three volumes, covering a very broad canvas. It follows the lives of two people, an opera singer and a mathematician, yoked together by fate from childhood to early middle age. Both are Chinese (though the opera is Italian), and the background of the novel is recent Chinese history, from the Great Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s to the 1989 student movement and its aftermath.

The action ranges all over China, from the lush valleys of the southwest to the frozen plains of Manchuria, from elite apartments in Beijing to the garrison settlements of occupied Tibet, from the easygoing corruption of 1970s Hong Kong to the wakening bustle of post-Cultural-Revolution Shanghai. It moves on to the boardrooms of Wall Street, the wealthy enclaves of Fifth Avenue and Long Island’s East End, and the international opera circuit.

The two principals, William Leung (born 1957) and Margaret Han (born 1958), are childhood friends in southwest China before the Cultural Revolution. That upheaval tears them apart. Margaret´s family is instrumental in the destruction of William´s, and William is taken to the far northeast to live in poverty and disgrace. The two then pursue separate paths. William, through much hardship and desperation, rises to eventual success on Wall Street. He uses his great wealth to take revenge on Margaret. Margaret, whose father is a senior officer in the Chinese army, grows up in a more sheltered background, eventually making a career as a singer of Italian opera. The two meet again as adults in New York City and are at first drawn together; but the bitterness of the past, and the wrongs they have suffered at each other´s hands, drives them apart again. This cycle of attraction and repulsion is repeated; then they come together in a final, but tragic, reconciliation.

Aside from the fates of the two principals, which of course form the book´s main subject matter, two lesser themes are developed. First, there is recent Chinese history, and the nature and direction of the modern Chinese state. Second is Margaret´s career as an opera singer, which is described in detail.

Margaret achieves fame as a singer of the bel canto style of Italian opera, and most especially as an interpreter of Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), who can be heard moving about behind the scenery at several points in the narrative. The book closes with Margaret singing Bellini´s greatest role, Norma, in the opera of that name. A sub-theme here is Margaret´s slow spiritual awakening, via her singing, her relationship with William, and her experiences in the "June 4th movement" at Tian An Men Square.

Though the book´s principal characters and their activities are entirely fictional, the underlying chronology is based on real events. Not only the political upheavals of recent Chinese history, but the Wall Street boom of the 1980s and the fates of Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert are used to drive the plot. Some minor characters are based, more or less approximately, on actual personalities from the worlds of opera, business, politics and popular culture; and a few real people (Bruce Lee, Richard Nixon, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales) have walk-on parts.

The book is written as a straightforward third-person narrative in 76 chapters. The tone and presentation of the story are strongly influenced by the author’s interest in classic Chinese novels and poetry...