Samurai
In 1613, four low-ranking samurai and a Spanish priest named Velasco sail across the Pacific to bargain for trade with New Spain. Endo follows them from Acapulco across the desert to Mexico City, then onward to Rome, where the mission becomes entangled with conversion, diplomacy, and the slow realization that Japan has already begun to close itself off from the world. Hasekura Rokuemon travels out of obligation rather than faith, and the book's real subject is the loneliness of a man caught between two civilizations that each demand something he cannot fully give.This Vintage Aventura paperback, the 1984 English edition translated by Van C. Gessel, is compact and unadorned, appropriate for a novel that moves through grand places without ever losing its inward focus. For readers who prefer historical fiction that questions its own heroes.
