Tempest in Paradise

This thriller is set in the Far Eastern city of Harbin in 1932 around the time of Japan’s imposition of a new state (Manchukuo) in Manchuria. The Australian author, Janet Mitchell (born 3 November 1896), knew the city well (see her reportage from there http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4462104). As an explanatory preface she wrote that “many of the incidents in this story actually happened” but “except for allusions to public personages... no references to any living person is made or intended”.

The plot reveals many interesting extensions of the geopolitics of the First World War: the increasing regional dominance of Japan, the brutal control of Soviet society, the White Russian diaspora, the efforts of the League of Nations and the fragile existence of British and American expatriates in Far Eastern outposts. One of the expatriates, W.E. Maunder, editor of The Harbin Morning Star, describes the setting:
“No, it's not a bad place, Harbin, really. Apart from the fact that politically it is one of the most interesting places in the world, especially now, with the Japanese sweeping up from the south and doing just what they dam’ well like, while the Powers blether at Geneva, with the Soviet crouching in the north, with one eye winking from Vladivostok over the Sea of Japan and the other skimming across Outer Mongolia to China — apart from all this, from which anything might emerge, from a second Korea to a world war, there’s its human interest, to use a somewhat trite expression.”

The central character is Boris Moitev, a young poet and aspiring leader of the counter-revolutionary movement among the Harbin Russians. The other main characters are Russian members of his household and some British expatriates, including Madeline Vincent, who falls in love with him. Madeline learns to see the severity of her existence: “Life! What was it all about? Only one thing had become clear to her lately, that life was something that hurt you...” She also reflects on the difference between her generation and that of her cousin Agnes who she is staying with in Harbin: “...we are so often at cross purposes. It's the battle of the generations — of the pre-wars who accept life and the post-wars who challenge it.”

The final scene of the novel happens in the context of the chaos that was caused by the devastating Sungari River Flood and a consequent cholera epidemic. The author does not attempt to bring the romance of Boris and Madeline to a cheerful conclusion. Perhaps the First World War had turned young writers away from ‘happily ever after’; instead a romantic tale could end in tragedy; the hero that the reader had come to identify with would not survive. At the denouement, Boris has these words of his friend Tanya at the front of his mind: “..life and death don't matter. Only two things count — pity for others; for ourselves, courage!”