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How to write historical fiction

The Shogun Quartet, Book 4

The Samurai's Daughter

Published in hardback as The Courtesan and the Samurai, this epic tale of love and war, of a nation divided and a love that can never be is based on the true story of 'the last Samurai'...

A magnificent, sweeping tale of love and war in nineteenth century Japan.  No-one writes about Japan with more mastery of historical and cultural detail than Lesley Downer.  I was enthralled by this wonderful novel.

This tale of a forbidden love, set during the era of the Last Samurai, completely captivated me.  I was swept along by Taka and Nobu's struggle to be together in the face of family opposition, social difference and, ultimately, war.  The world of the book - 1870s Japan - is vividly evoked.  But most of all this is a compelling and intensely romantic story, beautifully told.

Against the backdrop of civil war, Lesley Downer has created a rich epic of love, confusion and loyalty. Her deep knowledge, powers of description and meticulous attention to detail draws us into the hopes and fears of 19th Century Japan in such way that you will taste the food, watch the fashions, smell the streets and live through the personal tumult of a society on the edge of change. With Across a Bridge of Dreams, Ms Downer shows she is a writer at the very top of her game.

Like the era she describes, Downer has united two contradictory themes: love and war. Fans of period romance should be sure to pack Across A Bridge Of Dreams this summer, but those who prize blood over love in historical fiction will also find much to enjoy.

An epic tale of love and war, full of colour.

Lesley Downer's 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, and she lived there for some fifteen years. 
 
She has written many books about the country and its culture, including Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World, and Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha who Seduced the West, and has presented television programmes on Japan for Channel 4, the BBC and NHK. 
 
She lives in London with her husband, the author Arthur I. Miller, and still makes sure she goes to Japan every year.

In the brave new Japan of the 1870s, Taka and Nobu meet as children and fall in love; but their relationship will test the limits of society. 
 
Unified after a bitter civil war, Japan is rapidly turning into a modern country with rickshaws, railways and schools for girls. Commoners can marry their children into any class, and the old hatred between north and south is over - or so it seems. 
 
Taka is from the powerful southern Satsuma clan which now dominates the country, and her father, General Kitaoka, is a leader of the new government. Nobu, however, is from the northern Aizu clan, massacred by the Satsuma in the civil war. Defeated and reduced to poverty, his family has sworn revenge on the Satsuma. 
 
Taka and Nobu's love is unacceptable to both their families and must be kept secret, but what they cannot foresee is how quickly the tables will turn. Many southern samurai become disillusioned with the new regime, which has deprived them of their swords, status and honour. Taka's father abruptly leaves Tokyo and returns to the southern island of Kyushu, where trouble is brewing. 
 
When he and his clansmen rise in rebellion, the government sends its newly-created army to put them down. Nobu and his brothers have joined this army, and his brothers now see their chance of revenge on the Satsuma. But Nobu will have to fight and maybe kill Taka's father and brother, while Taka now has to make a terrible choice - between her family and the man she loves ...

A Geisha for the American Consul (a short story)

Two cultures. One man and one woman. One moment in time. 
 
Cultures collide when Okichi, a beautiful geisha, is sent to work for the American envoy in Japan. Age and pride meet youth and grace. How will she survive in a home where no one speaks her language, where she understands nothing and she must submit to a strange barbarian's will?

The Shogun Quartet, Book 3

The Courtesan and the Samurai

An epic story of forbidden love in a time of war by the author of The Last Concubine, one of the bestselling hardcover debuts of 2008.

Vividly narrated...I believed in this engrossing story and felt my insides quake as Hana approached her inevitable fate

1868. In Japan's exotic pleasure quarters, sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love ... 
 
Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure-quarters.There she is forced to become a courtesan. 
 
Yozo, brave, loyal and a brilliant swordsman, is pledged to the embattled shogun. He sails to the frozen north to join his rebel comrades for a desperate last stand. Defeated, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law - the Yoshiwara. 
 
There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten their very lives ...

The Shogun Quartet, Book 2

The Last Concubine

Epic history and romance combine in a passionate, exotic novel featuring the mysterious mistress of the last shogun emperor.

Japan, 1865, 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, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, is chosen to be his concubine. 
 
But Japan is changing, and 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 uncover the secret of her own origins - a secret that encompasses a wrong so terrible that it threatens to destroy her ....

Lesley Downer

It is completely absorbing, showing Lesley Downer's deep knowledge of Japan and her mastery of its complex history during the nineteenth century.

LIAN HEARN, author of Across the Nightingale Floor

A persuasive storyteller and the setting is mesmerising.

Superb. A wonderful evocation of an alien world, with entrancing characters and a riveting narrative that fits perfectly with the historical facts.

Lesley Downer has pulled off a remarkable achievement in making the beautiful, strange and dangerous world of one woman in a 19th-century Japan facing Western invasion utterly believable, and utterly gripping.

VANORA BENNETT, author of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Atsu is what we all want to be: a courageous woman of heartbreaking intelligence… set against our own darkest selves. This tale of western imperialism has so many resonances in the modern world, written with passion, depth and brilliance, and a sense of time and place that is earning Lesley Downer a reputation as the Shogun’s Writer for the twenty first century.

MANDA SCOTT, bestselling author of the Boudica novels

What a wonderful storyteller Lesley Downer is, and what an amazing story she tells in The Shogun’s Queen. Set at a pivotal moment in Japan’s history, her novel effortlessly transported me to nineteenth century Japan. At its heart is Okatsu, Downer’s heroine for all seasons, plus a vivid cast of characters – some loyal, some treacherous – all caught up in the turbulent politics of the time. I was only sorry to reach the end of this gripping and deeply suspenseful novel.

MARGOT LIVESEY, author of The House on Fortune Street

Impeccably researched, packed with intrigue, adventure and romance, this is a wonderful evocation of a bygone time.

An epic and intricate, beautifully described story of love, bravery and sacrifice . . . a must read for fans of Japan, historical fiction and great storytelling

What Hilary Mantel is to the Tudors or Mary Beard to the Romans, Lesley Downer is to ancient Japan.

The Shogun Quartet, Book 1

The year is 1853, and a young Japanese girl’s world is about to be turned upside down. 
 
When black ships carrying barbarians arrive on the shores of Japan, the Satsuma clan’s way of life is threatened. But it’s not just the samurai who must come together to fight: the beautiful, headstrong Okatsu is also given a new destiny by her feudal lord – to save the realm. 
 
Armed only with a new name, Princess Atsu, as she is now known, journeys to the women’s palace of Edo Castle, a place so secret it cannot be marked on any map. Behind the palace’s immaculate façade, amid rumours of murder and whispers of ghosts, Atsu must uncover the secret of the man whose fate, it seems, is irrevocably linked to hers – the shogun himself – if she is to rescue her people . . .

Lesley Downer

Praise for The Shogun's Queen

It is completely absorbing, showing Lesley Downer's deep knowledge of Japan and her mastery of its complex history during the nineteenth century.

A persuasive storyteller and the setting is mesmerising.

Superb. A wonderful evocation of an alien world, with entrancing characters and a riveting narrative that fits perfectly with the historical facts.

It is completely absorbing, showing Lesley Downer's deep knowledge of Japan and her mastery of its complex history during the nineteenth century.

A persuasive storyteller and the setting is mesmerising.

Superb. A wonderful evocation of an alien world, with entrancing characters and a riveting narrative that fits perfectly with the historical facts.

It is completely absorbing, showing Lesley Downer's deep knowledge of Japan and her mastery of its complex history during the nineteenth century.

A persuasive storyteller and the setting is mesmerising.

Superb. A wonderful evocation of an alien world, with entrancing characters and a riveting narrative that fits perfectly with the historical facts.

Books by Lesley Downer

Articles featuring Lesley Downer

How to write historical fiction

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