too long at the altar of the intellect, her intelligence provides sparkle as well as promise." In June 2016, New Directions reissued the novel. Retrospective reviews hailed it as a neglected modern classic. Anne Meadows, writing in Granta, ranked it as the best book of 2000. A 2018 article in New York named The Last Samurai as the novel of the century. In the piece Christian Lorentzen wrote, "The Last Samurai is, in a few ways, an instruction manual. It contains an ethics of living and learning, but it also attempts to tell its readers how to learn and to show them that they can learn things that they might have thought beyond their grasp." The Guardian called it a "bizarre, bold, brilliant book." The Millions had similar sentiments: "So if The Last Samurai belongs to a genre of books that perpetuate a seductive fantasy about the nature of intelligence, then it’s the best example of that genre I’ve ever seen." Awards and nominations The novel was shortlisted for the 2002 International Dublin Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times’ 2001 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and was longlisted for the 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction. References 2000 American novels 2000 debut novels Novels about families Books about human intelligence Multilingual texts Works about single parent families Novels set in London Chatto & Windus books New Directions Publishing books