Filling japanese history with life

[kabutoki]

Hello !
After reading two of her books I can recommand the series written by Laura Joh Rowland. It´s about a young, dynamic samurai with high ideals who has to survive in court of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi at the end of the 17th century. The complete story is fiction as far as I know but the author must have done a lot of serious studies about the time.
It does not only give a very good impression of those days, it is also a crime novel with a lot of tension in it.
In germany there are only the first and the second book availiable but there are four or five in english. Try amazon.com and go through her books. The books are published in the right order. You can read them seperatly but I´d start with the first one in order to understand the main character and his behaviour.

Enjoy reading !
Yours Karsten

[Chuck Clark]

Hello,

The author, Laura Joh Rohland, has three more books out in this series. I thoroughly enjoyed them all. I would also advise reading them in order.

The Way of the Traitor, The Concubine's Tattoo, and The Samurai's Wife

Enjoy!

[kabutoki]

Just in order to name them all:

1. SHINJU
2. BUNDORI

the following as seen above.
Yours
Karsten

I liked her first four books very much, but she takes way too many liberties with Japanese history and culture in the latest, "The Samurai's Wife." Although the characters are the same interesting individuals she has created in the series, I didn't much care for the plot line and the murderer's technique. I hope her next book is more like the first four.