Characters in "King Rat"
- The King: an American corporal; at the end of the novel he is sent back to the United States under an impending investigation for illegal profiteering in a prison camp, and is never seen again by Marlowe
- Peter Marlowe: the main protagonist, a young British fighter pilot who later becomes an author; based on James Clavell
- Robin Grey: an older British officer, after the war he becomes a member of Parliament and a Russian agent
Two characters from King Rat also appear in Noble House (published 1981), a novel set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, when Marlowe is a writer visiting Hong Kong to do research on the great British trading companies there. Grey, embittered by his failure to obtain a commission in the postwar British Army despite his suffering during the war, has become a radical socialist Member of Parliament and is also in Hong Kong on an official visit. Unknown to Marlowe, Grey has become a secret Communist and a Soviet agent who tries to thwart efforts to improve relations between China and the West.
Read more about this topic: King Rat (1962 novel)
Famous quotes containing the words characters, king and/or rat:
“No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Thou must tell me to one penny what I am worth.”
—Unknown. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury (l. 28)
“When a rat crosses a street, everyone shouts and beats it.”
—Chinese proverb.