The first half coin was redeemed during the events in the previous novel, and the second coin between the events of Tai-Pan and Noble House.

As tai-pan of Struan's, he must fulfill the request, whether legal or illegal, to anyone who presents one of the half coins that were initially split by Dirk Struan and the trader Jin Qua, serving as repayment for the latter's loan of silver. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House.ĭunross also inherited the 'coin debt' obligation first introduced in the Tai-Pan novel. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes. Anyone seeking to stop them cannot do so without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld.

Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent their actions. To this end, he seeks partnership with American millionaire Lincoln Bartlett, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Ian Dunross, the 10th tai-pan of Struan's and a descendant of founder Dirk Struan, struggles to rescue the company from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. Noble House is set in 1963 and serves as a sequel to Clavell's novel Tai-Pan. The miniseries updates the storyline of the novel to the 1980s.

In 1988, it was adapted as a television miniseries for NBC, starring Pierce Brosnan. The novel is over a thousand pages long, and contains dozens of characters and numerous intermingling plot lines. The 'Noble House' in the title is the nickname of Struan's, the trading company first introduced in Clavell's Tai-Pan. It is the fourth book published in Clavell's Asian Saga and is chronologically the fifth book in the series. Noble House is a novel by James Clavell, published in 1981 and set in Hong Kong in 1963.

Noble house hong kong