Book description
Japan, 1865, the women's palace in the great city of Edo.
Bristling with intrigue and erotic rivalries, the palace is home to
three thousand women and only one man - the young shogun. Sachi, a
beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, is chosen to be his concubine.
But Japan is changing, and as civil war erupts, Sachi flees for her
life. Rescued by a rebel warrior, she finds unknown feelings stirring
within her; but this is a world in which private passions have no
place and there is not even a word for 'love'.
Before she dare dream of a life with him, Sachi must uncover the
secret of her own origins - a secret that encompasses a wrong so
terrible that it threatens to destroy her ....
Lesley Downer
'
s
mother was Chinese and her father a professor of Chinese, so she grew
up in a house full of books on Asia. But it was Japan, not China, that
proved the more alluring. She lived there for some fifteen years. It has
been an ongoing love affair. She has written many books about the
country and its culture, including
Geisha: The Secret History of a
Vanishing World
, and
Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha who Seduced the West, and
has presented television programmes on Japan for Channel 4 and the
BBC.
The Last Concubine
is her first novel.
