"A master of international intrigue."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"It's hard to imagine a more nearly perfect spy story."
Milwaukee Journal

"Novels about international intrigue demand intricate plotting. Shibumi delivers."
Los Angeles Times

Nicholai Hel, born in the ravages of World War I China to an aristocratic Russian
mother and a mysterious German father, raised in the spiritual gardens of a Japanese
Go Master, survives the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world's most artful
lover and its most accomplished and highly paid assassin. Genius, mystic, master of
language and culture, Hel's secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal
excellence, a state of effortless perfectionshibumi.

Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his magnificent Eurasian mistress, Hel
faces his most sinister enemy, a super-monolith of espionage and monopoly. The battle
lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side and on the other, shibumi.


Trevanian is the best-selling author of The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Main, Summer of Katya, and Incident at Twenty Mile. His books have been translated into more than fourteen languages. He lives in the French Basque region of the Pyrenees Mountains.

Christopher Lane is an award-winning actor, director, and narrator. Earning rave reviews on every book he has narrated for Blackstone, he received the coveted Audie Award in 2004. He lives in Washington, D.C.