5/24/2023 0 Comments Shogun by james clavell reviewI read James Clavell’s Shogun so you don’t have to. It’s inconsistent, irresponsible, exoticizing, ahistorical, and long-winded. He breathes narrative … He writes in the oldest and grandest tradition that fiction knows”īut in my estimation in 2021, there is little to commend this book. It may be something that cannot be taught or earned. Reviewing the book for The New York Times in 1975, Webster Schott wrote “Clavell has a gift. I reread and live-tweeted my re-read as a stretch goal on my Patreon. However, twenty years later, as a published novelist with a doctorate in Japanese history, my opinion has changed. When I was in high school in the early oughts, I read and enjoyed the novel myself. Suffice it to say, the novel’s popularity has been exceptionally long-lived. As of this writing, a remake featuring Cosmo Jarvis and Sanada Hiroyuki is in production. It starred Mifune Toshiro and Richard Chamberlain. Five years later, Paramount Television made a TV miniseries adaptation of the novel. For many Americans, particularly of a certain age, Australian novelist James Clavell’s Shogun: A Novel of Japan was their pop culture introduction to the world of the samurai.
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