A first British edition, first printing of Shōgun by James Clavell, published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, in 1975. A very good copy, clean and bright internally, with no inscriptions. In the original dust wrapper, near fine, with only light wear to the extremities.
Shōgun is one of the defining popular novels of the twentieth century, and the work that brought feudal Japan to a vast Western readership. Set in 1600 at the moment of Japan's bloody struggle for succession, it follows the English navigator John Blackthorne as he is drawn deep into a world of warring samurai lords, rigid codes of honour, and cultural collision at every turn. Clavell's epic scale, his immersive detail, and his sympathetic rendering of Japanese society gave the novel an authority and ambition rare in popular fiction of its era. It became a phenomenon, a bestseller of enormous reach and later a landmark television adaptation, yet the novel itself rewards reading as serious historical fiction, attentive to the textures of power, loyalty, and cultural encounter. First British editions in this condition are increasingly scarce.
