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Informationen zum Autor Lesley Downer's mother was Chinese and her father a professor of Chinese! so she grew up in a house full of books on Asia. But it was Japan! not China! that proved the more alluring! and she lived there for some fifteen years. She has written many books about the country and its culture! including Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World ! and Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha who Seduced the West! and has presented television programmes on Japan for Channel 4! the BBC and NHK. She lives in London with her husband! the author Arthur I. Miller! and still makes sure she goes to Japan every year. Klappentext The year is 1853! and Japan teeters on the brink of turmoil. Growing up among the samurai of the Satsuma Clan! the beautiful! headstrong Okatsu had - like all the clan's women - been encouraged to be bold! taught to wield the halberd! and to ride a horse. But then the black ships appear. Bristling with cannon and manned by strangers who to Japanese eyes are barbarians! their arrival threatens Japan's very existence. And turns Okatsu's world upside down. For her feudal lord has chosen her for a very special role. She has been given a new name - Princess Atsu - and a new destiny: to save the realm. Her journey takes her to Edo Castle! a place so secret that it cannot be marked on any map. And there! in the women's palace - a place where only one man may enter - she seems doomed to live out her days. But behind the palace's immaculate façade! amid rumours of murders and whispers of ghosts! Atsu must unearth one last secret - the secret of the man whose fate is! it seems! irrevocably linked to hers: the shogun himself . . . Based on the remarkable true story of a woman who sacrificed everything - love! loyalty and maybe life itself - in a bid to save her world! The Shogun's Queen is epic! romantic historical fiction at its finest. Zusammenfassung Only one woman can save her world from barbarian invasion but to do so will mean sacrificing everything she holds dear - love! loyalty and maybe life itself . It is here that Atsu must complete her mission and discover one last secret - the secret of the man whose fate is irrevocably linked to hers: the shogun himself . ...
