Gai-Jin.
The heir to the magnificent English trading company, the Noble House...the directdescendant of the first Toranaga Shogun battling to usher his country into the modernage...a beautiful young French woman forever torn between ambition and desire...Their lives intertwine in an exotic land newly open to foreigners, gai-jin,torn apart by greed, idealism, and terrorism. Their passions mingle with monarchs and diplomats, assassins, courtesans and spies. Their fates collide in James Clavell's latest masterpiece set in nineteenth-century Japan-an unforgettable epic seething with betrayal and secrets, brutality and heroism, love and forbidden passions....
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
5people
2010–2026years
40% recommend20% neutral40% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Not sure if decade, as I don't have good memory for such stuff (sorry!), but certainly at least for last year, the following book that had a really huge impact on me:
Gai-Jin by James Clavell
It showed me how different cultures can have very different "codes", how they can see others as "barbarians" purely based on that; more specifically, helped me look more critically on (part of) European culture and history through "foregin eyes", and better understand some aspects of Japanese culture taking them nearly all the way from "weird" to "natural". While at the same time being just a super entertaining and engrossing story!
- Clavell's whole Asian Saga (Shogun, Tai-Pan, Gai-Jin, King Rat, Noble House, and Whirlwind) is amazing. My favorite is Tai-Pan - the book had a tremendous impact on me, and I'd imagine it would appeal to every real entrepreneur. The underlying themes are freedom, individualism, honor, risk-taking, and ultimately, building something and defending it.
- Shogun, after having watched the show. I also read the other books in Clavell's series, I thought Tai Pan and Gai Jin were interesting but not as much as Shogun. Gai Jin in particular felt like it had lots of filler.
- Shogun is a great read. It got me started on the whole historical fiction genre. The rest of the books in Clavell's Asian Saga are pretty good too except for maybe Gai-jin. I also enjoyed reading Gore Vidal's Lincoln and Burr from his Narratives of the Empire series - very entertaining and definitely not run-of-the-mill biographic portrayals.
