Books by James Clavell
Shōgun
by James Clavell
Shōgun, a 10-part mini-series, started streaming on Disney+ on February 27th, 2024. It’s excellent so far (and a big improvement on the 1980 mini-series)
“I was 15, I think, when I read it. I couldn’t believe that no one had ever written other books like it. I remember going to my English master at school and saying ‘What else is like this? I want to read more books like this!’ I can’t remember what he recommended, but I can remember picking them up and thinking they were nothing like Shogun. I was so entranced by the world of the 16th century he created that I’ve really had a fascination for it all my life.” Read more...
The best books on Life in the Tudor Era
Ian Mortimer, Historian
Interviews where books by James Clavell were recommended
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1
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo -
2
Homeland (Patria)
by Fernando Aramburu and Alfred MacAdam (translator) -
3
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler -
4
In Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust -
5
The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu & translated by Edward G. Seidensticker -
6
Clarissa
by Samuel Richardson
Long Novels
Long Novels
Shorter is better is the mantra of the digital age, but for some of us, there is no greater pleasure than reading a really long novel. Here we’ve listed some of the novels recommended on Five Books that are 400,000 words or more long, from literary classics to potboilers.
The best books on Life in the Tudor Era, recommended by Ian Mortimer
History is not about understanding the past for the sake of it, it’s about understanding human nature, says the historian and novelist Ian Mortimer.
