Posted: May 25, 2020 7:29 pm
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Shibumi is a Japanese word meaning a particular aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty. And a state of mind which our hero Nicholas Hel tries to achieve. He has a Russian mother and German father is raised in China and Japan and is stateless. The end of ww2 finds him starving in Tokyo and the graphic scenes of that first winter are very moving.
He speaks 4 languages and learns a fifth (Basque) while serving a three year sentence in a Japanese prison. The previous book Santori by Don Winslow is about the start of his career as an international assassin and this book is after his retirement so we are spared the blood and guts of his career. He assassinated terrorists at the behest of governments which naturally leave more questions than answers but, hey, he’s a good guy.
This book is based mostly in the Basque region of France where he becomes a famous caver and the author has him discovering the Gouffre Porte de Larrau cave system. The author wrote The Eiger Sanction. Some of the action takes place in here. It’s a worthy read and I recommend it.
And when I read this I naturally thought of don’t get me started:
And Basque is a language more suited to story telling than to exchanging information. No one can learn to speak Basque beautifully; like eye colour or blood type, it is something one has to be born to. The language is subtle and loosely regulated, with its circumlocutory word orders, it’s vague declensions, it’s double conjugations, both synthetic and periphrastic, with its old ‘story’ forms mixed with formal verb patterns. Basque is a song, and while outlanders may learn the words, they can never master the music.
Damn, one day I’m going to learn English!