Product Description

This is James Clavell’s tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, Shugun is a stunningly dramatic re-creation of a very different world.

Starting with his shipwreck on this most alien of shores, the novel charts Blackthorne's rise from the status of reviled foreigner up to the hights of trusted advisor and eventually, Samurai. All as civil war looms over the fragile country.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32396 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1136 pages

Guardian
'SHOGUN is a huge exotic, blood-stained canvas of sixteenth century but still medieval Japan'

Review
'My bet for the most satisfyingly popular novel of the year . . . It has power, it has violence, subtlety and lots, lots more . . . Clavell never puts a foot wrong . . . Get it, read it, you'll enjoy it mightily' (Daily Mirror )

'SHOGUN is a huge exotic, blood-stained canvas of sixteenth century but still medieval Japan, rival warlords and proselytising Jesuits, geishas, seppuku, samurai with the death-with and a shipwrecked Elizabethan' (Guardian )

'Mr Clavell tells his story brilliantly' (The Times )

'One of the great page turners of all time' ( Good Book Guide )

'I can’t remember when a novel has seized my mind like this one. It’s irresistable, maybe unforgettable. Clavell ... creates a world so enveloping you forget who and where you are' (New York Times )

Good Book Guide
'One of the great page turners of all time'

Customer Reviews

First Englishman in Feudal Japan
One of the best historical action drama novels ever written. The book is on par with the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough that brings Caesar to life.

What makes James Clavell's story so unique is his knowledge of the culture of the Samurai and Asia, that he came to understand as a POW during WWII.

Blackthorne is an English Captain shipwrecked on the shores of 17th Century Feudal Japan. The problems for him and his crew are life threatening from the start. In Shogun we get immersed in the warrior culture of the samurai. How can an Englishman thrive in such an alien culture, where he has no friends, no knowledge of the language, and only one dream - to build a ship that will take him home.

You simply must buy it.

I bought this book for the first time when I was 19 in 1982.
I have since bought two more copies simply because I have reread it so much the first two copies fell apart.
It just doesn't get much better than this story of a man dumped into a world completly different from anything he (or we) have seen before.
It's like the best science fiction in that it creates a world massively different to anything we've seen before - and makes us care about it and want to understand it.

Following directly from Shogun I bought 15-20 books about Japan - just becasue it was so compelling I wanted to know more about the country and it's history and it's people.

It's not going too far to say that this book changed my view of the world and has been a constant friend for a quarter of a century

My favourite book of all time
I simply love this book.
It has an adictive plot. James Clavell has a great way of expressing the characters and the surrounds of 17TH Centuary Japan. For me personally it made me see the world in a different light. This is simply a book you must own.