James Clavell - Shogun

SUPERBLY CRAFTED grips the reader like a riptide gets the juices flowing!

Washington Star*

SHGUN IS IRRESISTIBLE I cant remember when a novel has seized my mind like this one. Perhaps it was the authors Hong Kong novel Tai-Pan. James Clavell breathes narrative. Its almost impossible not to continue to read SHGUN once having opened it. Yet its not only something that you readyou live it possessed by the Englishman Blackthorne, the Japanese lord Toranaga and medieval Japan. People, customs, settings, needs and desires all become so enveloping you forget who and where you are.

The New York Times Book Review

A TALE SURGING WITH ACTION, INTRIGUE AND LOVE A HUGE CAST VAST AND DRAMATIC STUNNING SAVAGE BEAUTIFUL AN EXTRAORDINARY PERFORMANCE!

Publishers Weekly

EXCITING, TOTALLY ABSORBING be prepared for late nights, meals untasted, business unattended.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Adventure and action, the suspense of danger, shocking, touching human relationships a climactic human story.

Los Angeles Times

Adventure, intrigue, love death, bloodshed and sex reader, youll love it!

Library Journal

A COLOSSAL WORK IN EVERY WAY a huge panorama but you wont want it shorter by one sentence.

Cosmopolitan

I would like to thank all those here, in Asia, and in Europethe living and the deadwho helped to make this novel possible.

Lookout Mountain, California

The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead. Too many deaths on this voyage, he thought, Im Pilot-Major of a dead fleet. One ship left out of fiveeight and twenty men from a crew of one hundred and seven and now only ten can walk and the rest near death and our Captain-General one of them. No food, almost no water and what there is, brackish and foul.

His name was John Blackthorne and he was alone on deck but for the bowsprit lookoutSalamon the mutewho huddled in the lee, searching the sea ahead.

The ship heeled in a sudden squall and Blackthorne held on to the arm of the seachair that was lashed near the wheel on the quarterdeck until she righted, timbers squealing. She was the Erasmus, two hundred and sixty tons, a three-masted trader-warship out of Rotterdam, armed with twenty cannon and sole survivor of the first expeditionary force sent from the Netherlands to ravage the enemy in the New World. The first Dutch ships ever to breach the secrets of the Strait of Magellan. Four hundred and ninety-six men, all volunteers. All Dutch except for three Englishmentwo pilots, one officer. Their orders: to plunder Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World and put them to the torch; to open up permanent trading concessions; to discover new islands in the Pacific Ocean that could serve as permanent bases and to claim the territory for the Netherlands; and, within three years, to come home again.

Protestant Netherlands had been at war with Catholic Spain for more than four decades, struggling to throw off the yoke of their hated Spanish masters. The Netherlands, sometimes called Holland, Dutchland, or the Low Countries, were still legally part of the Spanish Empire. England, their only allies, the first country in Christendom to break with the Papal Court at Rome and become Protestant some seventy-odd years ago, had also been warring on Spain for the last twenty years, and openly allied with the Dutch for a decade.

The wind freshened even more and the ship lurched. She was riding under bare poles but for storm topsails. Even so the tide and the storm bore her strongly toward the darkening horizon.

Theres more storm there, Blackthorne told himself, and more reefs and more shoals. And unknown sea. Good. Ive set myself against the sea all my life and Ive always won. I always will.

First English pilot ever to get through Magellans Pass. Yes, the firstand first pilot ever to sail these Asian waters, apart from a few bastard Portuguese or motherless Spaniards who still think they own the world. First Englishman in these seas.

So many firsts. Yes. And so many deaths to win them.

Again he tasted the wind and smelled it, but there was no hint of land. He searched the ocean but it was dull gray and angry. Not a fleck of seaweed or splash of color to give a hint of a sanding shelf. He saw the spire of another reef far on the starboard quarter but that told him nothing. For a month now outcrops had threatened them, but never a sight of land. This oceans endless, he thought. Good. Thats what you were trained forto sail the unknown sea, to chart it and come home again. How many days from home? One year and eleven months and two days. The last landfall Chile, one hundred and thirty-three days aft, across the ocean Magellan had first sailed eighty years ago called Pacific.

Blackthorne was famished and his mouth and body ached from the scurvy. He forced his eyes to check the compass course and his brain to calculate an approximate position. Once the plot was written down in his rutterhis sea manualhe would be safe in this speck of the ocean. And if he was safe, his ship was safe and then together they might find the Japans, or even the Christian King Prester John and his Golden Empire that legend said lay to the north of Cathay, wherever Cathay was.

And with my share of the riches Ill sail on again, westward for home, first English pilot ever to circumnavigate the globe, and Ill never leave home again. Never. By the head of my son!

The cut of the wind stopped his mind from wandering and kept him awake. To sleep now would be foolish. Youll never wake from that sleep, he thought, and stretched his arms to ease the cramped muscles in his back and pulled his cloak tighter around him. He saw that the sails were trimmed and the wheel lashed secure. The bow lookout was awake. So patiently he settled back and prayed for land.

Go below, Pilot. I take this watch if it pleases you. The third mate, Hendrik Specz, was pulling himself up the gangway, his face gray with fatigue, eyes sunken, skin blotched and sallow. He leaned heavily against the binnacle to steady himself, retching a little. Blessed Lord Jesus, piss on the day I left Holland.

Wheres the mate, Hendrik?

In his bunk. He cant get out of his scheit voll bunk. And he wontnot this side of Judgment Day.

And the Captain-General?

Moaning for food and water. Hendrik spat. I tell him I roast him a capon and bring it on a silver platter with a bottle of brandy to wash it down.