Semishigure (Pre-order)

Shuhei Fujisawa (born Kosuge Tomeji) is the most beloved and successful writer of historical fiction in Japan, having sold over 20 million copies of his works and winning six major awards, including the Asahi and Naoki Prizes. His works have been adapted into several feature films including the Oscar-nominated The Twilight Samurai. Born in 1927, Fujisawa originally worked as a teacher before switching to journalism. After the sudden death of his young wife, he threw himself into writing historical fiction, the success of which allowed him to become a full-time writer. A prolific author, Fujisawa wrote over thirty novels and more than two hundred short stories during his life. He died in 1997.

Thomas Harper is retired from the Centre for Japanese and Korean Studies at the University of Leiden, where his academic specialty was The Tale of Genji and its readers. Throughout those years, he has also maintained a deep interest in a very different corner of Japan's history, the lives of the samurai during the years of peace in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. One product of this interest is his recent book, 47: The True Story of the Vendetta of the 47 Ronin from Akō (Leete’s Island Books). Yet another is this translation of Shuhei Fujisawa's novel, Semishigure.