The Last Samurai: A fiercely original cult modern classic about a prodigy searching for his father - Couverture souple

DeWitt, Helen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1784707961 ISBN 13 : 9781784707965

Editeur : Vintage, 2018

Synopsis

A brilliant, funny novel about a child prodigy, his formidable mother and the search for a father worthy of the name.

Sibylla raises her son Ludo alone in London, with little money and an education unlike any other. By four, he reads Greek, Arabic, Japanese and Hebrew. On the Circle Line, in museums and in rented rooms, she gives him Homer, mathematics, music and Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai as a set of possible models for courage.

But Ludo wants what Sibylla refuses to give him: his father’s name. At eleven, he begins testing possible candidates, searching not just for biology but for character, talent and a form of honour that might withstand his scrutiny.

The Last Samurai is a dazzling, funny and formally inventive literary novel about single motherhood, genius, poverty, language, fatherhood and self-invention. For readers seeking experimental fiction that remains emotionally alive, Helen DeWitt’s cult classic feels as strange, brilliant and necessary as ever.

‘Fiercely intelligent, very funny and unlike anything else I’ve ever read’ MARK HADDON
'Original...witty...playful…a wonderfully funny book' JAMES WOOD
'A triumph – a genuinely new story, a genuinely new form' A. S. BYATT

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Daughter of an American diplomat, Helen DeWitt was born in a suburb of Washington, D.C. in 1957 and grew up in Latin America. Abandoning a degree at Smith College, she went to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1979 to study classics. A Senior Scholarship at Brasenose College enabled her to get a DPhil and discover Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa and Mel Brooks. She left academia in 1988 to write a novel; she had 100 unfinished novels on her hard drive when The Last Samurai was published in 2000 to international acclaim. Her second novel, Lightning Rods, was published in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. She has contributed installations to Artists Space in New York and was resident and participant in the Plastic Words series at Raven Row in London. In descending order of proficiency she knows Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese. She is based in Berlin.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

‘Fiercely intelligent, very funny and unlike anything else I’ve ever read’ MARK HADDON'Original...witty...playful…a wonderfully funny book' JAMES WOOD'A triumph – a genuinely new story, a genuinely new form' A. Let loose on London, Ludo sets out on a secret quest to find the last samurai – the father he never knew.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Vintage
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1784707961
• ISBN 13: 9781784707965
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 496
• Coordonnées du fabricant: EDITIONS GALLIMARD; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italie