The Last Concubine
1881. Growing up deep in the mountains of rural Japan, Sachi has always felt different, her pale skin and fine features setting her apart from her friends and family.
Then, when she is just eleven, an imperial princess passes through her village and sweeps her off to the women’s palace in the great city of Edo. Bristling with intrigue and erotic rivalries, the palace is home to three thousand women and only one man - the young shogun. Sachi is chosen as his concubine.
But Japan is changing. Black Ships have come from the West, bringing foreigners eager to add it to their colonial empires. As civil war erupts, Sachi flees for her life.
Rescued by a rebel warrior, she finds unknown feelings stirring within her. But this is a world in which private passions have no place and there is not even a word for ‘love’. Before she dare dream of a life with him, Sachi must unravel the mystery of her own origins – a mystery that encompasses a wrong so terrible that it threatens to destroy her.
Set in one of the most tumultuous eras in Japanese history, Sachi’s story is a potent mix of adventure and high romance. More than a love story, it also chronicles Japan’s extraordinary change from a medieval to a modern country in a matter of years. From the timeless beauty of the Women’s Palace in Edo to bloody battles fought outside its walls, The Last Concubine is an epic evocation of a country in revolution, and of a young woman’s quest to find out who she really is.
The Author
Lesley Downer
Lesley Downer’s great passion is Japan. Her 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. She has lived there on and off for a total of some fifteen years and written many books about the country and its culture. It has been an ongoing love affair.