The Last Samurai

Name: The Last Samurai
Author: Helen DeWitt

Helen DeWitt · 2000

A single mother teaches her prodigy son ancient Greek, Japanese, and Inuit while they watch Kurosawa's Seven Samurai on repeat in an unheated London flat. DeWitt published it in 2000 and it became a cult classic almost immediately. The novel is about genius, motherhood, and the search for a father, written in a polylingual, typographically inventive style that no one has successfully imitated.

The case against

on the lengthy asides
“she distances the reader with lengthy asides (not to mention passages in Greek and Japanese)”
Lisa Darnell · The Guardian, 2000
on the length
“Just shy of 500 pages, it is sure to scare off some readers”
Maya Solovej · The Rumpus, 2016
on the Greek passages
“a little too enamored with long passages of translation from Greek”
a book blog
on the second half
“first half of this book absolutely wonderful, and then the second half just kinda wonderful”
a book blog