If you've ever wanted to know what it takes to become the world's hottest lover and most kick-ass ninja-style assassin, then Shibumi lets you in on the secret. First, you need to learn to play Go well; then you have to become fluent in Basque.

Real Go players tell me I'm about second Dan strength, but unfortunately I don't know any Basque at all. One out of two ain't bad, I guess. Anyway, you've probably figured out why I adore this engagingly crazy book.
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I thought of Shibumi last week when I was in Japan, and wondered whether I should add something here about the plot. I don't really think it's necessary. Basically, it's just your standard boy meets girl, boy becomes champion Go player, girl gets killed in nuclear attack, boy switches profession and becomes ninja-style assassin, boy learns Basque, boy meets second girl, boy and second girl play a lot of advanced sex games, boy meets third girl, third girl gets killed by shadowy Arab/American multinational company, boy swears revenge, boy...

Oh, well. I admit it. It's not completely standard. But, you know, just minor variations on the usual theme.
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If you've never bothered to look at the Wikipedia article on Trevanian, it's worth reading. This was my favorite bit:

It was rumored that Trevanian was Robert Ludlum writing under a pen name. Trevanian rejected that idea stating, "I don't even know who he is. I read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century.

When are they going to make a movie about him?

Acabado Shibumi, de Trevanian. Pse, pse, no sé qué deciros. Pintaba mucho mejor de lo que ha acabado siendo.
Va de un chaval europeo con educación oriental/japonesa entre Shangai y Tokio que se supone se acaba convirtiendo en un asesino de terroristas pero con ética mística.

Lo bueno : el planteamiento inicial y el arranque en sí de la novela.
Lo malo : es del 76 y ha envejecido mal. El protagonista vive en un castillo en el país vasco-francés y he tenido que leer descripciones romántico-ridículas sobre los libertarios de la ETA. Sin comentarios, sólo entendible porque cuando lo estaba escribiendo teníamos a Franco y ETA podía parecer otra cosa de lo que finalmente fue.

Pero es que además el autor mete mil y una expresiones en euskera (“vasco” en el libro) que no tengo claro ni que estén bien escritas. (Ver escrito “xoritzo” en vez de “chorizo” como comida típica vasca no ha tenido precio). Y en francés, y en alemán, y en más idiomas porque debía ser típico de literatura en los 70. Por cierto, que las imágenes de los vascos también son para nota a pesar de las alabanzas que se pueden leer en la Wikipedia si buscáis “shibumi”.

Y te mete unas chapas de impresión con la espeleología que me he tenido que saltar. Y el ritmo de la acción, que ya digo que empieza bien, decae en interés y en ideas.

Vamos, que no diría yo que es recomendable.

Nicholai Hel is such a stud duck bad-ass that even if James Bond, Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne and the Dos Equis’s Most Interesting Man in the World banded together to try and take him down, he’d just kill them all with a drinking straw while lecturing them on the evils of their materialism. Then he’d have mind blowing sex with their girlfriends.

Hel was born to a exiled Russian countess in Shanghai in the ’20s and a Japanese general thinks the young man has such an exceptional talent for the game Go that he sends him to Japan to train. Hel spends years before and during World War II learning the game and immersing himself in Japanese culture. After the war, he gets on the bad side of the occupation forces and spends years in prison. Once released, he becomes an international assassin.

Decades later, Hel has retired to his chateau in the mountains with the Basque where he indulges in his hobby of spelunking. However, when the niece of an old friend gets caught up in an international conspiracy led by an oil corporation, Hel will have to decide if an old debt to that friend extends to protecting the woman against powerful international forces.

I only vaguely knew about Trevanian after reading Incident at Twenty Mile, but since Don Winslow, one of my favorite crime writers, just released an authorized prequel to this book, I had to check it out. What I found is that Trevanian has done a sly parody of the spy novel here with the incredible Hel being a character of pulp superhero style attributes. Not only he is brilliant with a gift for languages, he is also a mystic capable of going into trances where he becomes one with the universe and he has a ‘proximity sense‘ that allows him to sense other people and their moods.. In addition to all that, he’s a martial arts expert and a world class cave explorer. Oh, and he’s the world‘s foremost lover who can literally ruin a woman for other men if he unleashes his full power upon her.

Trevanian’s playing with the format of the spy novel extends to the structure of the book. The first half of the novel consists of the minions of the evil “Mother Company” researching Hel’s origin story after the become worried that he may try to ruin their plans. (The whole idea of the Mother Company being an energy conglomerate that is the real power behind the government to the point where their man Diamond has set up his own office in the CIA and started giving orders to everyone is a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true.)

After half the book is spent discussing what a bad ass Hel is, the next quarter of the book is an account of Hel and his friend exploring a cave. It’s only in the last part of the book that the action picks up, but even then, we barely see Hel actually do anything although he does manage to pile up a respectable body count in the last chapters.

I liked this book and the way that Trevanian was having some fun with the genre by creating such an over the top character but playing it completely straight. However, there was one aspect that kept bugging me. Trevanian was a staunch anti-materialist. Hel shares this attitude and looks down his nose with contempt at the ‘merchants’ of the world. He has claimed the moral high ground by living in his mountain house with few modern comforts.

Yet, even thought Hel is continually portrayed as being the superior person for his way of life, there’s no mention made about how a guy who claims to hate materialism spent years killing people for money, and then spent a fortune on a house in the mountains to live in isolation. So I guess it takes a huge amount of money to truly live a non-materialistic lifestyle. After a while, Hel’s smug and hypocritical attitude about this annoyed the hell out of me because it seemed like the one part of the book Trevanian was serious about.

My original review was wrong in a couple of respects, not bad though for the 25 years or so that had passed since I read it. I'd say it is somewhat closer to Eisler's John Rain than the other authors I mentioned, & it wasn't shibumi that I didn't like, it was Hel's final thoughts & conclusions, although I must admit they fit him well & brings home a point made early on. Truly well done.

Nicholas Hel is an interesting character, one of the most complicated I've ever read in a mystery-thriller. He's intelligent & tough, a connoisseur of Go, assassination, caving, rock gardens, & love making. I found the last a bit much in the context of the book even allowing for hyperbole, but the others were kind of neat & all worked toward his goal of shibumi. He learns secrets of these arts & we're shown glimpses of them, but Trevanian excuses himself from giving details about 1/3 of the way through with a footnote that indicates his previous books were responsible for getting a man killed (The Eiger Sanction) or as a guide to one of the greatest art thefts. (Not sure what book that was in.)

Shibumi is the noun form of 'shibui' according to Wikipedia, although the book says at one point that the former is greater than the latter. As I understand Trevanian's definition in the book, it is the aesthetic of perfect function in or of something that is done in a simple and unobtrusively beautiful way or form. That is Hel's goal in life, to creating perfection in himself & his surroundings. This implies balance within himself, his relationships, his needs & desires.

Hel's life began with a great handicap to obtaining this goal & that's what makes Hel at once both admirable & a selfish bastard. He's the hero & I was rooting for him, but he's never very likable, although certainly competent in this wonderfully cynical world. That's part of the fascination of the story, the cynical dislike that it embodies & gives free rein to. There are no straightforward or patriotic actions, everything is part of a vast conspiracy of expediency & greed. No one has any respect for anyone else, but it is often so artfully phrased that it's almost fun, especially since the insults fall on every nation.

Hel tells one American, "Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad." A statement that is both true & thoroughly demeaning to the merchant country that Hel despises in light of this story.

The Mother Company is another cynical construct of such possibility that it is scary. Worse, this book from 1979 discusses a computer system that has so many facts about everyone that it takes an artistic touch to obtain a meaningful overview of a person. The danger lies not in too shallow a view, but in so many facts that it overwhelms the recipient with such trivia as grade school honors & toilet paper preference. Even back then it bred nightmares of conspiracy theories & now it just seems likely, especially given the interests they represent.

All very well done, but there were some flies in the ointment. As exacting as descriptions of the caves & mountains were, operations were barely sketched in their planning & execution, with the exception of the climaxes. Trevanian made his excuses early as I pointed out above, but it still casts them in as 'magical fixes'. Too many wheels turned too quickly & smoothly. Life was a bit too cheap, too.

Another is Hel's martial art skill. We never find out where or how he learned it, but he's legendary for killing people with whatever is at hand, including a drinking straw. We spend a good chunk of the book exploring Go, caves, even how he picked up his legendary skill at making love, but there is no mention of when, how, or where he picked up his deadliest skill. Again, it comes off as neat, but magical, so severely weakened the novel as a whole for me.

Still, if you can abide those few flaws, it's a hell of a story & Hel puts all other assassins to shame. He has more class than Bond & is apparently better in bed. On top of that, he has a deep philosophy & is a legend in the circles of power. Very cool.
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Update: My friend, Michael, just pointed out that Satori by Don Winslow is a homage to & another part of Hel's story. It's set back during the Korean War, so before "Shibumi". Both reviews that I read said they loved "Shibumi" & were worried that this book wouldn't meet the mark, but it did. I've read it & reviewed it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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Orginal review 2007 or so It's a good action/spy novel. The title word, 'Shibumi' is the main theme of the book & it's well done. I can't really explain without giving away too much of the book. I also can't give it higher marks because it's been too long since I've read it & I happen to philosophically disagree with the idea of 'Shibumi'. Your mileage could very well vary, though. As I recall, it was well written. If you like David Morrell's or Stephen Hunter's spy novels, you'll probably like this.

Lo siento porque es una LC.
Pero estando en el 55% miro mi librería y decido que es momento de darle carpetazo; que me llaman muchos libros como para seguir intentando que me atrape este.

Less a novel than Trevanian's expansive personal shitlist of people he hates in novel-form. A partial list of said people includes: Arabs, Americans, young people, some Jews, women who aren't concubines, feminists, Texans, Russians, Prussians, merchants, Andy Warhol, modern Japanese, Arabs (seriously,) Italians, French, Brits, some Basques, Cowboys, War Criminals (Japanese ones excluded,) Christians, chess players, wine snobs, Clint Eastwood, bankers, airport security, gays (this despite his seeming-penchant for the rippling thighs of young Basque lads,) salespeople, Stage 1 lovers, and Arabs. He really, really hates Arabs. He sure seems to be down with assholes, though. Ahh, Shibumi: you're exquisite trash. Don't ever change.

The first warning sign was that the author goes by only one name. Any guy who attempts this little bit of artifice not doubt has an ego that impedes upon gentle ingress and egress of doors, automobiles, sweaters, etc. Even the people who have pulled off the single moniker still have full names that are known to their most ardent fans (e.g., Elvis Aaron Presley, Jesus Horatio Christ). Still, this was enough to have me determined to root against the guy's protagonist out of sheer spite, but I digress...

The writing of this book was mostly heavy-handed 2-star fair (predictable plot, stereotypical characters) with occasional 1-star bits (the protagonist has a sixth "proximity" sense that let's him identify danger in the dark, he was also a mystic, and the world's greatest lover*). The only reason I didn't give it 1 star is that there are brief passages that are well written and offer keen insights into either the human condition or the American personality (in as much as either truly exists). Of course, there are passages where he tries the same and misses (or just beats the Americans-are-shallow angle to death). In the end, I am embarrassed to admit, I did end up rooting for the protagonist and don't entirely regret the time I spent reading this one, so it I'll let him keep the second star for the time being.

*This book was written before I was born. The rankings have likely been adjusted in more recent years.

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UPDATE -- I am absolutely shocked to realize that after more than 2000 reviews, this book has a higher average rating than The Glass Bead Game, The Name of the Rose, or Gravity's Rainbow. Proof that not all hive-minds are created equal...

In the Fall, 1988, issue of the American Go Journal, the late Bob High printed a number of random facts gleaned from a survey of American Go Association membership forms. Among the items was a mention of how members reported having been introduced to the game. According to Bob's list, a significant number first discovered Go by reading Shibumi -- more than from any other book or popular cultural reference [this was, of course, long before Hikaru no Go, the manga and anime that introduced many younger players to Go].

Shibumi, like many of Trevanian's works, is an espionage thriller. Protagonist Nicholai Hel is the world's most highly paid assassin. The main plot is a fairly commonplace sort for the genre: Arab governments, American oil interests [linked in something called the Mother Company] and elements of Western spy agencies are all working together for nefarious purposes, which require them to kill the members of an Israeli special ops unit. The sole survivor contacts Hel and persuades him to involve himself. Stuff then happens, and more stuff follows, in general spy novel fashion.

What makes the book important to Go players lies in Hel's life before he becomes an assassin. Born in Shanghai, he learns go at a young age and is later taught intensively by his mother's lover, a Japanese general who is an excellent player. After the death of Nicholai's mother, the general sends him to live in Japan at the home of a famous go professional, Otake 7-dan. According to the acknowledgements at the front of the book, Otake is based on a real life individual. Biographical parallels would suggest that the model was the great player and teacher Kitani Minoru. For what it is worth, Otake is also the name given to the character based on Kitani in Kawabata's great novel The Master of Go. Hel spends six years living the life of an insei, a student professional. The game of Go is intimately connected to his lifelong pursuit of Shibumi, great refinement underlying commonplace appearances, and authority without domination.

Many specific plot elements involve Go; for example, after the war, when the general is imprisoned by the US, he and Hel are able to talk in front of his guards by using Go terms as a code. In addition Hel's entire life revolves around the pursuit if Shibumi and the role of Go in that pursuit.

The six chapter titles are all Go terms, meant to create analogies between the events of the plot and stages or aspects of a game of Go: fuseki [opening], sabaki [light, flexible play], seki [standoff], uttegae [sacrifice play], shicho [ladder, a Go term for a type of gradual trap], and tsuru no sugomori ["the cranes are confined to the nest", another sort of trap].

I grew up on novels of Robert Ludlum and Eric Van Lustbader as well as some pulp novels known only to those living in ex-Yugoslavia during the 1980s, little blue books less than 100 (maybe 130) pages each called simply „Ninja“. While Ludlum's novels were more action espionage thrillers oriented more to the Western world, Lustbader's The Ninja as well as its cheap knockoff, let’s call it blue Ninja, were oriented towards East, often including mysticism as a tool of the protagonist. Both of them had similar heroes, one had Nicholas Linnear, the other Leslie Aldridge, both white men that became ninjas, shadow warriors of old, with almost supernatural abilities and senses, capable of killing a man with any object they can get their hands on. Oh, yeah. They both have an exotic Oriental lover who is a dream girl and they're both lovers par excellence.
While blue Ninja is so obviously based on Linnear, we can say without a doubt that Lustbader was inspired by Trevanian's Nicholai Hel and his adventure in „Shibumi“. Dedication to Japanese culture, being the deadliest assassin in the world who grew up in the Far East, abilities that sound too good to be true, world's best lovers with exotic Oriental girlfriends. All things that connect them, however, Trevanian's novel is nothing like it's being advertised.
Reading the back cover blurb, one might think that Hel is a mix of Jason Bourne and Casanova, and one would be wrong. Sure, the book does open with an action sequence and it's brimming with clichés, but that's only because Trevanian is playing with the reader. „Shibumi“ plays out as an airport thriller, a satire of spy action novels of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as a critique of American society and their foreign policy. Strangely, even though the novel is almost 50 years old, most of the things from it can be applied in the world today.
The best part of the novel definitely is the part of Hel's growing up, where he goes from Shanghai to Japan. Trevanian was obviously enjoying writing that part and it's a damn shame the rest of the novel isn't the same. Not saying that the rest of it is bad, because it's not, especially when you realize how Trevanian is playing with the genre. However, some parts can be tedious. And the character of Le Cagot, who I'm convinced is mocking of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls due to swear words used (if one can call those expressions like that), is a bit over the top.
Nevertheless, „Shibumi“ is a great airport thriller. Or should I say, airport thriller with a bit of a brain.

excellent thriller. Hel can kill you with anything, Trevanian is in top form with this one. dare not miss it. from the cherry blossoms of Japan to dark caves to the mists for the final showdown... I go back and re read this evry once and a while and always come away loving it.

Hiç sevmediğim kitaplar arasında kolayca yerini aldı ve ilginç bir şekilde neden bu kadar çok övüldüğünü, göklere çıkarıldığını çözemedim. Karakterlerin tamamı hatta nicholai bile yüzeyseldi. Hikaye kısmı daha bir garip çünkü arka kapak ve kitabın ilk 30 sayfası bütün kitabı özetlemiş. Son 100 sayfaya kadar sadece baştaki ilk 30 sayfanın açılmış ve uzatılmış halini okuyoruz. Nicholai'nin anlamsız derecede uzun anlatılmış hayat hikayesi tam bitti derken bu sefer de mağara kısımları başlıyor. Ee hani CIA meselesi derken konu bir türlü oraya gelemiyor. En sonunda son 100 sayfada hızlı hızlı olaylar gerçekleşiyor ama hiç tatmin edici bir şekilde olmuyor.
Açıkçası sevemedim ve okurken içim daraldı.

I rarely write book reviews, but I have a bone to pick.
There were many very interesting parts of this book, and it started strong. Half-way through, when the main character (Hel) catches up with the present, all goes to hell.
1) Trevanian substitutes thesaurus use for style.
2) None of the main characters have any redeeming value. Despicable human beings.
3) Every woman is an easy lay, and "our hero" is more than happy to oblige. Give me a break.
4) This book was sold to me as "off the beaten path." Yet it was utterly conventional. With more depth, it might've been Clancy. With more action, it might've been Ludlum. It struck an unhappy medium.
5) And worst for last... Trevanian has created a character who belongs to no culture. From that pinnacle, he (Hel, and presumably Trevanian who doesn't pull back from his awe of Hel)is well-perched to pass judgment on all cultures. And America takes the worst beating. Hel wasn't shy about hopping up on every available piece of furniture to spit on the culture of the USA. And Trevanian was more than happy to help, by painting the absolute worst image of America's people, principles, and organizations. This is a shoddy way to treat the country that gave you birth, education, and employment for so long. We *made* you, Mr. Whitaker.