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Spence, Alan

The pure land / Alan Spence - Edinburgh ; New York : Canongate , 2006 - 420 p. ; 23 cm.

The year is 1858. Thomas Glover is a restless young man with dreams of escaping Aberdeen. Abandoning his childhood sweetheart, he takes a posting as a trader in Japan. Within ten years he amasses a great fortune, learns the ways of the samurai and helps overthrow the Shogun - a rapid rise from lowly shipping clerk to millionaire industrialist. Yet behind Glover's astonishing success lies a man cut to the heart. His love affair with a courtesan - a woman who, unknown to him, would bear him the son for which he had always longed - would form a tragedy so dramatic as to be immortalized in the story of Madame Butterfly. The Pure Land relives in fiction the arc of Glover's true-life rise and fall, and forges a 100-year saga that culminates in the annihilation of Nagasaki in 1945.

ISBN: 9781841958828

LCCN: 2008425195

Nat. Bib. Agency Control No.: 013651005 Uk

Subjects--Personal Names:
Glover, Thomas , 1838 - 1911

Subjects--Topical Terms:
Scots----Fiction
Merchants----Fiction
Relationships----Fiction
Women----Fiction

Subjects--Geographic Terms:
Japan----History----Meiji period 1868 - 1912----Fiction

Index Terms--Genre/Form:
Biographical fiction

LC Class. No.: PR6069.P43 / P87 2007

Dewey Class. No.: FIC SPE