The Pure Land

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.

Reviews of The Pure Land

"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 "…marks The Pure Land out, not merely as an engaging and vivid historical novel, but also a meditative work of art that is as finely honed as a samurai's sword." The Times "He is a gentle writer, but never sentimental. The beautiful moments have always been earned. He is a writer to cherish, one offering deep and fulfilling pleasures." Allan Massie"