Book Information

Ludo, age six, is a prodigy. His mother, Sibylla, raises him alone and tries hard to keep his voracious intellect satisfied, while she struggles to make ends meet. With her exasperated guidance, he teaches himself Greek, so that he can read The Odyssey, before moving on to study Hebrew, Arabic, Inuit, and Japanese. And both Sibylla and Ludo share a passion for Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which they watch repeatedly, absorbing its lessons of samurai virtue. Soon Ludo embarks on a quest to find his father and approaches seven men to test their mettle. Each of them, prominent, powerful or flawed in his own way, has to rise to a unique challenge. The Last Samurai is full of stories of remarkable exploits, snatches of Greek poetry, passages of Icelandic legend and ingenious mathematical problems, as Ludo's search for a father, or even a man heroic enough to be his father, gradually reveals a new and unexpected dimension of love.