Satori (2011 novel)
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| Author | Don Winslow |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Grand Central Publishing |
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Publication date
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2011 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 504 pages |
| ISBN | |
| LC Class | PS3573.I5326 38 210 |
| Preceded by | Shibumi |
Satori is a historical novel by Don Winslow about the love of a man and a woman who practise the oldest professions of the world. The novel is a prequel to Trevanian's novel Shibumi and features the same protagonist, assassin Nicholaï Hel.
Nicholaï Hel and the French woman Solange Picard are brought together by somebody who designs missions for an American secret service. Nicholaï Hel is the only man who can possibly carry out a certain covert operation in Beijing. When Solange Picard has prepared him, he must leave her for his mission. Once he is gone, Solange gets routed. Thanks to the training she provided he can carry out the assassination and also afterwards leave China.
The American secret service needs to seek him out for they have to fear he turns against them. Again they depend on Solange Picard because his evident love for her makes her the only possible and all the more irresistible bait. Against all odds they become a couple until her death tears them apart.
Satori, published in 2011, takes place in the 1950s, two decades before the 1970s action of real-world predecessor Shibumi.
Unlike in Shibumi Nicholaï Hel is not presented as a man who has already established himself within the world of espionage. Instead he is a just a prisoner who acts out of necessity when he gets an unexpected chance to achieve amnesty. He does indeed carry out the requested suicide mission but it comes to that only after the target Voroshenin has boasted about having abused Nicholaï's mother and after Voroshenin, a notorious sadist, has tried to have Nicholaï tortured to death. For the novel's second half (chapters 87-164) Nicholaï acts as an independent arms dealer while he tries to restore his lost heritage which he wants to share with his love Solange Picard. No part of the whole novel does even imply Nicholaï Hel would possibly become entangled in the business of espionage again. So in spite the fact that secret services play a role in Satori, it is no spy novel.
The storyline consists of three parts. Don Winslow tells the story in chronological order. The two chapters with biographical flashbacks are hardly more than embellishments or at best literary rhetoric.
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