Samurai

The Samurai audiobook is the story of one of Japan's most acclaimed novelists based on true events. Written by Šúsaku Endó, read by Martin Zahálka. In his novel Samurai, Shūsaku Endō develops the theme to which he dedicated his first and most famous novel, The Silence, which was also adapted into a film by the famous Martin Scorsese. The plot of the audiobook slightly precedes Endo's most famous book and is inspired by a true event. One of Japan's local princes seeks to establish trade relations directly with Spanish Mexico, New Spain, has a European-style ship built, and sends a quartet of samurai emissaries on it along with a large group of merchants. The clash between Christian faith and Japanese culture and mentality, one of the themes of Shūsaku Endō's life, is presented this time from multiple perspectives, not only through the eyes of a European missionary. The novel's central characters are the samurai Hasekura Rokuemon and the missionary Velasco, whose perspectives intersect to intersect in the novel's tragic finale. The Samurai is both an intense inner drama and an eloquent travelogue that brings many unexpected encounters and insights, just as when the inhabitants of many parts of Europe first saw an envoy from a distant and exotic land somewhere in the East.