Lord of the Golden Fan

Of all the tales of adventure that have come down to us from the age of Elizabeth the First, the story of Will Adams is perhaps the most exotic and incredible. And yet it is true that this man of Kent, who sailed as pilot of five small trading ships on a twenty-one months' voyage to the fabled Spice Islands of Java and Sumatra, became not only the first Englishman to set foot in Japan, albeit more dead than alive, but the lifelong protégé and friend of the reigning Shogun, Iyeyasu.

This novel is a dramatic reconstruction of the tempestuous, exhilarating, gloriously colourful story of Will Adams among the Japanese--a people so different in all their thoughts, ther beliefs and traditions that his life was constantly at stake. By his stature and intelligence he survived the many plots of his enemies and lived to become a Samurai, one of the Lords of Japan. And by his prowess and wise counsel he opened the way to Japan's first contacts with the learning and culture of the West.

Christopher Nicole's creation of seventeenth-century Japan is so splendid an achievement, his account of the adventures of this solitary Englishman amid that country's strange customs so full of excitement and suspense, that there can surely be few lovers of historical fiction who will not find theft blood tingling and their hearts stirred by this portrayal of one of the great adventurers of the age of adventure. While Drake and Hawkins were creating their own legends at sea, Will Adams in so different a fashion carried the majesty of Elizabethan England to the other end of the earth and found there a civilization in many ways more enticing than his own.


Genre: Historical