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.

1. İşinin doğru yapılmasını istiyorsan, en meşgul adama yaptır derler, bilmez misiniz?
2. Dilencilik mesleği yasaklanmıştı ama fahişelik tabii devam ediyordu.
3. Askerler de erkeklerin en hayvanca davranan kesimiydi.
4. General tipik Japon baba rolünü üstlendi ve Otake'ye böylesine tembel ve yeteneksiz bir öğrenciyi eğitme yükünü üstlendiği için teşekkürler etti.
5. Bütün savaşlar sonunda kaybedilir. İki taraf da kaybeder, Nikko.
6. Artık profesyenel askerler arasında yapılan meydan savaşlarının günü çoktan geçti. Şimdi savaşlar karşılıklı sanayi kapasiteleri arasında, ülkenin nüfüsları arasında yer alıyor. Ruslar, denizler gibi akıp gelen insanlarıyla Almanları yeneceklerdir. Amerikalılar da anonim fabrikalarıyla bizi yenecekler. Eninde sonunda.
7. Yıllar sonra batılıların vicdanı Hamburg ve Dresden'de olanlar için epey sızladı. Oraların halkı beyaz ırktan olduğu için. Oysa 9 Mart bombardımanından sonra Time dergisi, olayı " gerçekleşen bir rüya" diye tanımlıyor, Japon kentlerinin de sonbahar yaprakları gibi yanabileceğinin anlaşıldığını yazıyordu. Üstelik Hiroşima'ya daha vakit vardı.
8. Acaba....acaba Amerikalılar bunları meyve vermiyor diye keserler mi? Herhalde. Hem de iyi niyetle.
9. Diplomaside temel fonksiyon, söylenen şeyin anlamını gizletmekti.
10. Amerikalılarla Ruslar arasında ilikşkiler güvensizlikle ve birbirine karşı korkuyla doluydu. Ufak tefek olaylarda birbirinin vatandaşlarıyla fazla uğraşmıyordu.
11. Bu yüzden kısa zamanda İngilizleri 'beceriksiz Amerikalılar', Avustralyalıları da 'stajyer Amerikalılar' olarak görmeye başlamıştı.
12. Japonların en büyük kültürel kusuru, duygularını ifade ederken duydukları rahatsızlıktı. Bir kısmı hislerini taş gibi bir sessizliğin arkasına saklarken, diğerleri ya aşırı terbiyenin, ya da aşırı minnet ve ya üzüntünün arkasına gizlenmeye çabalardı.
13. Sizler ve Ruslar, aynı şeyin biraz deyişik iki örneği gibisiniz. Orta düzeydeki kişilerin zorbalığını temsil ediyorsunuz.
14. Zaman ancak, içi boş olduğu zaman ağırdı.
15. Ne de olsa raslantı dediğiniz şey kaderin bir numaralı silahıdır.

Welp, this is what I get for judging a book by its cover. I thought this would be a cool spy novel with some sort of Go tie-in, but I couldn't get past the first few chapters because of the casual racism and sexism in it. The actual CIA spy plot also seemed like a terrible setup. At first, I read this thinking it was parody, but after checking the publish date and reading some reviews of the book, I guess it's in earnest. Some would say this was a product of its time, so maybe it should just stay in that time because it's definitely not 2020 material.

It reads like some sort of male power fantasy fulfillment (if you're into that type of thing) so...maybe not for me.

7/10

Kitabın ilk yarısını Trevenian, diğer yarısını bir başkası yazmış gibi.

İlk yarısı enfes... Edebi bir şaheser. Her bir cümle, her bir anlatım kayda değer. Hele çiçekli bir yolda yürüme sahnesi var ki, orada geçen diyalogların her bir kesiti için saatlerce düşünmeye değer. Kulağıma küpe olsun ve hayat boyu hatırlayayım diye yaptığım alıntılar vardır.

Öte yandan, kitabın kalan yarısı ise ucuz ve ikinci sınıf bir Hollywood filmine dönüşüyor...

Sadece o ilk yarısı için beş yıldızı hakediyor benden.

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.
________________________________

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?

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.

The reading public back in 1979 picked this book up thinking they were reading a best selling thriller novel, little did they know they were going to be exposed to a Trevanian philosophy called SHIBUMI.

n  n

“SHIBUMI has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace
appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real.
SHIBUMI is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In
demeanor, it is modesty without prudency. In art, where the spirit of
SHIBUMI takes the form of SABI, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity.
In philosophy, where SHIBUMI emerges as WABI, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is…authority without domination. One does not achieve SHIBUMI, one…discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. One must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity to arrive at SHIBUMI.”

I've seen reviewers say that this book is too intelligently written to be published today. A bit cynical in my opinion, the book is a product of the time, but certainly doesn't come across as a typical written by-the-numbers thriller. Written today it would obviously be written differently. Probably some of the more defining aspects of the book would be lost, but I still think this book would make the spring list of a major publisher.

The first part is about Nicholai Hei's upbringing in Shanghai and Tokyo. He was born to an exiled Russian countess and a German soldier. His mother does whatever she needs to do to survive as territory changes hands and new armies march into town. Luckily for Hei his mom has the good fortune to snag a Japanese General, Kishikawa,who takes a shine to the boy. He arranges for Nicholai to be sent back to friends who can further his teachings in the Japanese philosophy game of GO. Nicholai has a natural ear for languages and learns five. As the world destabilizes and the Americans and the Russians start competing for trophies, Nicholai finds himself without a country. His one asset is his knowledge of languages. He takes a job working for the Americans even though he loathes them. The book is filled with pointed criticisms of all nationalities, but Trevanian's favorite target is the Americans.

"It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure – in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals."

Hei commits an act that brings him under the control of the CIA. The accusations that are thrown at him reminded me of 2008 when then Senator Obama was running for President and people were holding up signs with a Hitler mustache under his nose and accusing him of being a Stalinist. I kind of felt they needed to pick whether he was a Nazi or a Communist. It is really hard to be both.

"If I understand you, Major-and frankly I don't much care if I do-you are accusing me of being both a communist and a Nazi, of being both a close friend of General Kishikawa's and his hired assassin of being both a Japanese militarist and a Soviet spy. None of this offends your sense of rational probability?"

Hei is subjected to devastating torture while in the hands of the Americans and this treatment sets him on his course of being an international assassin for hire and a level four master of sexual intercourse. Yes, in this novel there are four levels of sexual aptitude and I am not going to speculate as to where I fall on the spectrum.

The first part of the novel is really good, but I really liked the second part because we get to meet Hei's friends. We find Nicholai living in a chateau in the Basque region of France.

n  n

His best friend is Beñat Le Cagot a self made man, a Basque poet who has an ego larger than Donald Trump only expressed with much more intelligence. He is randy, fun loving, and a spelunking companion for Hei. He likes expressing himself with colorful language such as "By the Two Damp Balls of John the Baptist."

A typical conversation Hei always has to endure Le Cagotisms.

"Is everything laid out?
"Does the devil hate the wafer?"
"Have you tested the Brunton compass?"
"Do babies shit yellow?
"And you're sure there's no iron in the rock?"
"Did Moses start forest fires?"
"And the fluorescein is packed up?"
"Is Franco an asshole?"

Hei takes this all in stride, but I found myself snorting out loud several times at the Le Cagot wit. Trevanian must have had a giggle or two coming up with some of the Le Cagot expressions.

Needless to say Hei becomes enmeshed with a situation counter to American interests. He enlists the aid of his other friend "The Gnome" a dwarf (Peter Dinklage?) and a world class blackmailer who has the means to bring governments to their knees. Body counts rise quickly, and in the course of his chess match with the Americans he realizes he has much more to lose than his life philosophy would ever have him admit. The book is at times over the top, spoofish, but the real brilliance of the book is the ability to read it on whatever level you want. If you want to take it to the beach as a mind diverting entertainment it will deliver. If you want to read it and let your mind toss around the aspects of the philosophy of Shibumi that is also quite easily done. Either approach to the book will garner enjoyment. Highly recommended and if I write much more I'm going to convince myself to bump it from four to five stars.

I want to leave you with a summary of Hei's view of American culture.
"It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun."

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].

İlginç bir karakterdi Nicholai Hel. Tanıştığıma memnunum ama.

I read this when it first came out and remember thinking it was fantastic. I actually just recently took the hardback off my shelves when culling some book for donation. A great review of this book just popped up which triggered me to see if I had added this to my read books. Somehow I missed it when I went through my shelves of books already read.

classic spy novel--learned that airports had inferior screening policies in the '70s from reading this book, also that Go is a Japanese game which holds all the secrets of life.

this book is must read. put down your bibles and read Shibumi.