The Eight Corners of the World

Chelsea VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co.. Fine in Near Fine dj. 1988. First Edition. Hardcover. [nice as-new copy, with no discernible wear to book; the jacket has just a touch of wrinkling along the top edge, which effectively disappears inside its new mylar jacket cover]. A satrical novel, "the story of the life and times of Yoshinori Yamaguchi (a.k.a. Gooch, a.k.a. Lt. Benshi, a.k.a. Foto Joe), a Japanese with a passion for the English language and Hollywood movies, who has a knack for getting in history's way." The narrative ranges from the 1930s, when the protagonist gets a job as interpreter for a visiting American League all-star baseball team (where he makes friends with third-string catcher and spy Moe Berg), through World War II (when he's drafted into the Japanese army and assigned to make documentary films on Japan's military conquests), to post-war Japan, when he "forms a small film compay, which he builds into a multimillion-dollar global enterprise that produces jui-jitsu action movies." Apparently a review copy, with a couple of publisher's postcards laid in. .