The Last Samurai Book

The Last Samurai is a debut and ambitious novel by Helen DeWitt. And by the way, it has nothing to do with the Last Samurai movie starring Tom Cruise, but yet has a relation to the samurai subject. The book is about complex relationships between a single mother Sibylla, her young son Ludo (Ludovic), and the world outside their little family.

The plot of the Last Samurai book unfolds like this: Sibylla raises her son Ludo on her own and trying to occupy him while she is busy doing a mundane work typing boring articles for a mediocre magazine, she buys him book in foreign languages, mainly for colouring. Surprisingly enough, he turns to be a young genius: learns several languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Old Norse, Inuit, and is doing amazingly well in maths and science. And that's all even before he goes to a school. The big question for a boy though is to find out who his father was, but Sibylla being ashamed and confused, doesn't want to reveal it to him or even talk about it. So the son will be on a quest to find who his father was, which he'll do, but that won't make him happy.

The name of the Last Samurai book comes from obsession of both mother and son with a masterpiece of Akira Kurosawa "Seven Samurai". And Sibylla hopes that this movie will provide her son with male role models he's in a deep need.

The Last Samurai book is seemingly divided into two parts, with first part narrated from Sibylla and more dedicated to education and development of Ludo, and the second part is coming from Ludo with his views and tales. The novel is built on interlacing of relations of interesting people and makes you wonder how much you can miss in this world in every day life even without noticing.

The Last Samurai book is remarkable for its profound but often funny approach to human relations, thoughts and balances. It will make a good read and Helen DeWitt should be very pleased with her debut.

You can see current listings for The Last Samurai Book here: