Dimensions
129 x 198 x 31mm
'A triumph - a genuinely new story' A. S. Byatt
'Destined to become a classic' Garth Risk Hallberg
'The funniest book I've read in years' Spectator
Eleven-year-old Ludo is in search of a father. Raised singlehandedly by his mother Sibylla, Ludo's been reading Greek, Arabic, Japanese and a little Hebrew since the age of four; but reading Homer in the original whilst riding the Circle Line on the London Underground isn't enough to satisfy the boy's boundless curiosity. Is he a genius? A real-life child prodigy? He's grown up watching Seven Samurai on a hypnotising loop - his mother's strategy to give him not one but seven male role models. And yet Ludo remains obsessed with the one thing his mother refuses to tell him- his real father's name. Let loose on London, Ludo sets out on a secret quest to find the last samurai - the father he never knew.
Originally published in 2000 to international acclaim, The Last Samurai is a paean to the power of language and learning, dazzling, delighting and inspiring a legion of readers.
