THE LAST SAMURAI - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing

DeWitt, Helen

ISBN 10: 0786866683 / ISBN 13: 9780786866687

Published by New York City, NY: Hyperion/Talk/Miramax, 2000, 2000

1st Printing. 530 pages. Published in 2000. The author's breakthrough debut novel. Regarded by many critics and serious readers as the greatest American novel of the first decade of the 21st century. The true First Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now rare. Presents, in its true first format, Helen DeWitt's "The Last Samurai". Her tour-de-force masterpiece, unsurpassed by her, and perhaps unsurpassable, a West-Meets-East, one-of-a-kind achievement. "The pleasure of ideas, the rich varieties of human thought, the possibilities that life offers us, and the balance between the structures we make of the world and the chaos that it proffers in return: Stylistically, the novel mirrors these ambivalences. DeWitt's remarkable prose follows the shifts and breaks of human consciousness and memory, capturing the intrusions of unspoken thought that punctuate conversation while providing tantalizing disquisitions on Japanese grammar or the physics of aerodynamics. Remarkable, profound, and often very funny. Arigato DeWitt-sensei" (Burhan Tufail). The title is DeWitt's homage to her protagonists' obsession with Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai", ranked at the end of 2010 by film critics worldwide as the greatest "foreign" film of all time. As DeWitt herself would have observed, "foreign" as opposed to what? Hollywood films? If so, there is no competition to speak of. An absolute "must-have" title for Helen DeWitt collectors. This title is a great book. This is one of very few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Talk/Miramax, the publishing arm of Miramax Films, collapsed shortly after it was launched. Beset with other priorities (its failed magazine) and internal problems, it failed to undertake a necessary publicity tour for its stunning book coup - and its Berlin-based author. Very few copies were actually printed, making the First Edition hard to find in any condition. Copies available online have serious flaws or are in innumerable subsequent printings from another publisher, New Directions. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. One of the most brilliant writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER HELEN DEWITT TITLE IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0786866683. Seller Inventory # 24103

Synopsis:

A child prodigy with a talent for languages and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, Ludo shares with his single mother, Sibylla, an obsession with Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, absorbing its lessons in Samurai virtue, and embarks on a quest to find his father, approaching seven men to test their worthiness. 75,000 first printing.

About the Author: Helen DeWitt was born in 1957 in Takoma Park, Maryland. She grew up mainly in South America. She started a degree at Smith College in 1975 and then went on to Oxford to study classics and philosophy. She spent a year at Somerville College, Oxford, before deciding to give up academic life in 1989. She now lives in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE LAST SAMURAI - Rare Fine Copy of The ...
Publisher: New York City, NY: Hyperion/Talk/Miramax, 2000
Publication Date: 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Signed: no
Edition: 1st Edition.