The Courtesan and the Samurai
Japan, 1868: in the floating world of Japan’s pleasure quarters, sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love.
Just out! – Order ‘The Courtesan and the Samurai’ on Amazon.co.uk
Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and very vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees for her life across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure quarter. There she is sold into a brothel and forced to train as a courtesan.
Yozo, a traveller, adventurer and brilliant swordsman, returns to Japan after four years in the Victorian West to discover that the world he left behind him has been destroyed. Travelling north to join his rebel comrades, he is captured during their final battle. Escaping, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law – the Yoshiwara.
There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten their very lives …
Reviews
‘Downer shows us characters we come almost to love, while others are awful or ambiguous. … I believed in this engrossing story and felt my insides quake as Hana approached her inevitable fate.’ Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator, 26th April, 2010
‘Exotic locations, lives torn apart by adversity…and heart-stopping romance.
Lesley Downer’s sumptuous novels are the stuff of dreams for girls who just want to curl up with a good book and escape!
Her much-acclaimed debut, The Last Concubine, was a hard act to follow but this fact-based story of two young people caught up in Japan’s bitter civil war of the 1860s is another seductive thriller.
Inspired by real historical events, The Courtesan and the Samurai features two star-crossed lovers whose lives converge against an epic backdrop of savage combat, lush sensuality and dangerous secrets. …
Downer’s love and knowledge of all things oriental gives her novels a classy edge…impressively descriptive, well researched and brimming with all the colour, culture and customs of a distant world, this is historical romance at its best.’ Pam Norfolk, Lancashire Evening Post, 29th April, 2010
