Shogun.

CLAVELL, James.

Item Number: 136491

New York: Atheneum, 1975.

First edition of the first chronological work in Clavell’s epic Asian series. Octavo, original half cloth, cartographic endpapers. Signed by the author in the year of publication on the half-title page, “James C Bev Hills July ’75.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. Rare and desirable signed.

"It's almost impossible not to continue to read Shogun once having opened it,' wrote Webster Schott in The New York Times Book Review. 'Yet it's not only something that you read—you live it… Shogun, set in Japan in the year 1600, follows the adventures of the fictional John Blackthorne, whom the novel presents as the first Englishman to reach Japan… In 1980 Shogun was made into a five-part television mini-series that starred Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune and was seen by 120 million viewers, the largest audience for a mini-series since Roots" (New York Times). Although Shogun is the first volume in Clavell's Asian series, it was published after the novels King Rat (1962) and Tai-Pan (1966). The series also includes the novels Noble House (1981), Whirlwind (1986) and Gai-Jin (1993).