Shibumi

By: Trevanian

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

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 perfection: shibumi.

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.

©1979 Trevanian (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Solo Narration (Male)

"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)

Well prepared and executed.

Shibumi is one of my favorite books, to hear it preformed are reading it multiple time over the last 30 years was a delight.

Fantastic story

This book is so well written. You’ll love it. After this, check out Don Winslow’s ‘Satori’. A kind of prequel to the Nicholai Hel story.

Not an expert, I liked it...

Hello, I was surprised that Marius was so critical of a book I enjoyed tohoughly. An engineer, not qualified to discuss Proust, I like novels featuring Japanese philosophy couched in 'action' format. So, now an admitted philistine, I also disclose that my Audible libray includes over 500 titles; I recommend this book to those who enjoyed Across the Nightingale Floor...

Pretty OK

Flawed....but still worked perfectly on my solo sojourn to the Sierra Nevadas. Each background sidetrip left me at night pondering a new philosophical question or two. The cave scenes surprisingly held my attention... I expected to be bored. I read this book over 20 years ago, and had forgotten some of the more interesting forays. It is cynical. It is dark. It is cliched, and some of the character's accents were read off note..., but somehow it worked for me. Oh well. No accounting for taste or personal experience.

Esoteric, Eclectic, Excellent

This is a book that takes one away to many exotic, interesting, intriguing places. Folks with limited imagination or intellect may find themselves fighting boredom, but here is a book that tours war-torn Shanghai, the game of Go, an American prison in post-war Japan, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, spelunking in the Basque Pyrenees, and other delightful side-trips. More than anything else, this book is FUN. It is NOT a serious, high tension drama with a devious plot. If anything, it is a melodramatic excursion in a fashion similar to The Eiger Sanction, or even the "spoofier" Loo Sanction. Joe Barrett's reading verges on pure genius.

Great!

Great story, fantastic reading. I was enthralled the entire time. It made my long bike rides and runs truly entertaining.

Good story, dated, but good!

I read this book when it came out in the early 80's. If you were very young then or cannot remember that time at all you will find the computer reference's very dated. For those of us that lived it, well it's fun to remember. Once you get past that this is a good story. The narrator does a very good job maintaining his characters and bringing the story to life. I loved it.

Intriguing story, horrible reader.

I've been wanting to "read" this book for a while and it finally became available. The reader was so horrible, I almost gave up listening to it. He generally sounded more like a commercial actor with that cadence that only works for commercials. His Japanese pronunciations were abominable. And his attempted Basque dialect sounded more like a pirate. I struggled through only because the story was so compelling.

best seller for a reason

it starts off with gratuitous violence just to get your curiosity, then adds great character development to obtain your interest. assassination plots from CIA, to the secret organization that controls the world. and how a masterclass assassin can destroy it all. are you high recommend a list to.

Entertaining

Loved the detail in each of the sections as the story developed. Well worth it