The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard
I closed this book for the last time with great happiness. Hazzard's book is a luscious, literary beauty: each page a devotion to the elegance of the human word. This is a war book, but not like your typical war book. When the story opens World War II is already over and we meet Aldred Leith, a highly decorated British soldier who has accepted a special assignment after the war to write about China and the social changes that it is undergoing as the Red Chinese take over.
It is a simple love story, one made marvellous by the numerous settings: Kure, Japan; rural China; Hong Kong; London; the British countryside; Florence, Italy; San Francisco; Wellington, New Zealand. As the story wound up I was astonished at the number of characters in far-flung corners of the world, interacting, and caring for each other. The moral, I guess, if one needs morals in such things, is that the war may have scattered people across the globe, but scattered people can still take care of one another.
But the real moral here is that esquisite prose makes for damn good reading. If you read this one, keep a dictionary handy. I looked up more words for this book than any since Lolita.