SOURCE: An obituary in The New York Times, September 8, 1994, p. D19.

In the obituary below, the critic provides an overview of Clavell's career.

James Clavell, the author of Tai-Pan, Shogun, Noble House and other richly detailed historical novels set in the Far East, died on Tuesday in Vevey, Switzerland. He was 69 and had homes in Vevey and Cap Ferrat, France.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, April.

Although historians sometimes disputed the historical accuracy of Mr. Clavell's novels, no one doubted his gifts as a storyteller, or his ability to draw the reader into a faraway time and place. "It's almost impossible not to continue to read Shogun once having opened it," wrote Webster Schott in The New York Times Book Review. "Yet it's not only something that you read—you live it."

His ability to deliver a gripping narrative and establish an exotic setting won Mr...