The Pure Land - Tapa blanda

This is a modern epic, a heart-breaking love story and an unforgettable journey of the spirit. It is a powerful historical novel based on the remarkable life of the man who inspired Madame Butterfly. It is a mass market paperback of the acclaimed novel for summer reading 2007. It is backed by a high profile advertising campaign including "Sunday Times", "Daily Mail", "Metro" and "Daily Telegraph." The year is 1858. Thomas Glover is a gutsy eighteen-year-old who grasps the chance of escape to foreign lands and takes a posting as a trader in Japan. Within ten years, he amasses a great fortune, learns the ways of the samurai, and, on the other side of the law, brings about the overthrow of the Shogun. Yet beneath Glover's astonishing success lies a man cut to the heart. His love affair with a courtesan - a woman who, unknown to him, would bear him the son for which he had always longed - would form a tragedy so dramatic as to be immortalised in the stories behind Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon. "The Pure Land" relives in fiction the arc of Glover's true-life rise and fall, and forges a hundred-year saga that culminates in the annihilation of Nagasaki in 1945.

"His imagination is given full rein but this never clouds his instinctive understanding of the contradictions of the human condition. It is a glorious finale to a very fine novel." Sunday Herald "...marks The Pure Land out, not merely as an engaging and vivid historical novel, but also a meditative work of art that is as finely honed as a samurai's sword." The Times "He is a gentle writer, but never sentimental. The beautiful moments have always been earned. He is a writer to cherish, one offering deep and fulfilling pleasures." Allan Massie"