The Last Samurai
- New York: Hyperion, 2000
New York: Hyperion, 2000. Very Good -/Very Good. New York: Hyperion, 2000. First Edition, stated, with full numberline. Octavo (24.2cm); illustrated dust jacket with $24.95 price intact; black boards and black cloth spine with red lettering; [x],530pp. Jacket shelfworn with rubbing and bumping along top edge and a few stray smudges. Boards square with nudging at spine ends; spine panel coming unglued from textblock but binding still holding soundly overall. Interior unmarked.
Met with wide acclaim even before publication and shortlisted for several prizes, The Last Samurai sold 100,000 copies in English but fell suddenly out of print and into a sort of cult obscurity--partially due to the difficulty of securing rights for the numerous other works quoted and the design / copyediting gymnastics involved in typesetting its many foreign language passages. Finally reissued in paperback by New Directions in 2016, the novel is beginning to find a second wind, with Vulture naming it “The Best Book of the 21st Century (for Now).”.
Met with wide acclaim even before publication and shortlisted for several prizes, The Last Samurai sold 100,000 copies in English but fell suddenly out of print and into a sort of cult obscurity--partially due to the difficulty of securing rights for the numerous other works quoted and the design / copyediting gymnastics involved in typesetting its many foreign language passages. Finally reissued in paperback by New Directions in 2016, the novel is beginning to find a second wind, with Vulture naming it “The Best Book of the 21st Century (for Now).”.