Yasuke was a samurai of African descent. Craig Shreve's new novel will give him the attention he deserves
The African Samurai comes out on Aug. 1, 2023. Read an excerpt now!
Yasuke was a 16th century samurai. He was Japan's first foreign-born samurai, and the only samurai of African descent. His story is special, and little known. Canadian writer Craig Shreve, hopes to change that with his novel The African Samurai.
The African Samurai tells Yasuke's story. As a boy, he is sold as a slave to Portuguese mercenaries. A series of unlikely events results in Yasuke in Japan, now imprisoned to the powerful warlord Oda Nobunaga. From there, the two forge an unlikely bond, and Yasuke begins his journey to becoming a samurai, and the power that comes with it. But with this power comes attention, risk, danger — and the chance to make history.
"I first stumbled across Yasuke's story a few years ago when I discovered a short video about him. My initial reaction was that this story could not possibly be true without my having heard of it before. This is a person who, had I known he existed, would have probably been a poster hanging on my wall. He has an incredible resiliency and adaptability, and he had the trust of Japan's most powerful man during one of the most critical periods in the nation's history. I just felt like this was an individual who should be broadly known, and I hope this book contributes towards making his name much more mainstream," Shreve told CBC Books in an emailed statement.
Shreve is writer originally from North Buxton, Ont. He is also the author One Night in Mississippi.
The African Samurai will be available on Aug. 1, 2023. The novel has already been optioned as a film by Forest Whitaker.
Read an excerpt from The African Samurai below.
Home is a lost place, more dream to me than memory.
Even the fragments I held onto felt foreign and distant, like things that had happened in another's life. The life of someone who had not been taken away, who had not been severed from his own beginnings. And yet sometimes, a memory would come through so clearly it ached.
Home is a lost place, more dream to me than memory.
As a child, my family and a few others from the tribe made the long hike from our village in the shadow of Mount Namuli to the coast. It was late in the year, the time of the laying of eggs. We set our camps on the edge of the beach and watched the turtles come ashore at night, waves of them, with hard, dark shells and soft, speckled underbellies. They seemed to be moving both independently, and in unison. They used their flippers to create indentations in the sand and rested atop them. We committed the spots to memory, and slept.
In the morning, when the turtles had gone, we dug up the eggs, taking only what we needed. We made the trek back to the village with the eggs carried carefully in baskets. About two months later we would make the long hike to the beach again. We set our camps in the same place on the beach's edge. Under the light of the full moon, the sand began to pucker and shift. One tiny bill poked out from beneath it, then another, then a dozen more, a hundred. A mass of tiny turtles crawling toward the yawning expanse of green froth, drawn there by something we could never understand. I wanted to believe that they were crawling out to sea to find their mothers, to reunite themselves.
The first trip to the sea had been to gather food. The second trip had been to learn why to leave as many as possible, to take only what was needed. I can remember my mother's voice, but not her face. Nor can I remember my father's. I have flashes of reading and writing lessons under a mango tree. Of working alongside the other boys inside the mines, stripping the cave walls for ore; playing with them in the fields, using small pebbles for games of mancala in the dirt of the streets. Of festivals with drums and masks and brightly colored robes, the thrill of seeing visitors from other lands and the wares they brought to trade. And I remember the turtles, rising out of the sand and making their way to the sea.
It was the last time I was free.
The African Samurai by Craig Shreve. Published by Scribner Canada, a division of Simon & Schuster Canada. Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved.
