Escape

James Clavell

The Shah is thrown out of Iran and the nation’s turmoil becomes world headlines. Caught in this shifting world of fanaticism, ambition, duplicity, heartbreak and violent death are the foreign helicopter pilots who have been servicing the oilfields up and down the country. Their one objective now is to make a bold concerted escape, with their helicopters, to safety across the Gulf.

James Clavell told the full story of the three weeks it took them to achieve this in his 1986 bestseller, Whirlwind. In Escape he has taken out just one poignant thread from that epic narrative. The result is the moving and tender love story of Erikki, the blond Finnish pilot, and his beautiful high-born Iranian wife, Azadeh, whom he loves beyond safety and beyond politics.