The Pure Land

by Alan Spence

Overview

The year is 1858. Thomas Glover is a gutsy eighteen-year-old who grasps the chance of escape to foreign lands and takes a posting as a trader in Japan. Within ten years he amasses a great fortune, learns the ways of the samurai, and, on the other side of the law, brings about the overthrow of the Shogun. Yet beneath 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 immortalised in the stories behind Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon.

The Pure Land relives in fiction the arc of Glover's true-life rise and fall, and forges a hundred-year saga that culminates in the annihilation of Nagasaki in 1945.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847674296
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	11/02/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Alan Spence is an award winning poet, playwright, novelist and short story writer. His awards include the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award, the Macallan Short Story Prize and the McVitie Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. He is Professor in Creative Writing at the Universityof Aberdeen, where he is also Artistic Director of the annual WORD Festival. He is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Editorial Reviews

Scottish writer Spence (Stone Garden) fictionalizes the life of Thomas Glover, a 19th-century Scots entrepreneur who built a mercantile empire in Japan, and whose life inspired Madame Butterflyand Miss Saigon. In 1858, the young Glover, son of a coast guard officer, works as a clerk in Scotland. He lives with his family, but longs to see the world, and takes a job in Japan with Jardine, Mathieson & Co., a British trading house. Soon, Glover is also working as an independent trader in arms and opium, among other things. As he forms connections with a number of different Japanese clans, Glover falls in love with a courtesan, and the consequences last for generations. He also slowly gets wrapped up in the fate of Japan, as the country makes the transition away from a feudalism fraught with clan violence. Spence opens this lively and epic historical narrative in 1945, at the moment of the U.S. bombing of Nagasaki. Thoughtful and vivid, the novel adds rich detail to a life known mostly in broad strokes. (Nov.)

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Publishers Weekly

Fictionalized biography of the young adventurer-turned-businessman who helped shape modern Japan and may have inspired Madame Butterfly. Scottish writer Spence's fourth work of fiction (Way To Go, 2004, etc.) is a muscular historical novel focusing on one man's contribution to Western traders' penetration of the hostile East. Aberdeen-based Thomas Glover's youthful appetite for risk and opportunity is given full scope when he lands a job in Japan in 1859, working for traders Jardine, Mathieson & Co. Ambitious, hardworking and instinctively entrepreneurial, Glover soon has his own import/export business in Nagasaki, trading tea, silk, gold and anything else he thinks will turn a profit, including weapons. He disregards advice from the studiously neutral British not to get involved in local politics, supporting the Choshu clan that eventually leads rebel forces to overthrow the shogun and propel Japan into modernity. Female characters feature little and sadly in this story. Glover leaves behind an early romance and a son in Scotland; his first Japanese marriage fails when a premature child dies; another Japanese love, Maki, brings up his son Tomisaburo alone, thinking Glover is back in Europe. By the time the misunderstanding is cleared up, he has a new wife and a young daughter, but offers to take in Tomisaburo and give him a better life. Maki hands over her son, then throws herself into the river. Glover loses one fortune but moves to Tokyo and makes another; he dies in 1911, by which time Japan is becoming industrialized. Tomisaburo lives to see the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki. A colorful, empathetic, melancholy-tinged portrait of a Victorian colossus.

Kirkus Reviews

Edinburgh writer Spence, whose accolades include Scottish Writer of the Year in 1995, tells how in 1858 Glover left Aberdeenshire for Nagasaki, where he went on to build a business empire and become a key figure in Japan's industrialisation.

Financial Times

His imagination is given full rein but this never clouds his instinctive understanding of the contradictions of the human condition. It is a glorious finale to a very fine novel.

Sunday Herald

Edinburgh writer Spence, whose accolades include Scottish Writer of the Year in 1995, tells how in 1858 Glover left Aberdeenshire for Nagasaki, where he went on to build a business empire and become a key figure in Japan's industrialisation.

Financial Times