Shibumi

Trevanian

Jun 2005 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Joe Barrett

About this audiobook

Nicholai Hel, born in the ravages of World War I China to an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father, and raised in the spiritual gardens of a Japanese Go master, survives the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished and highly paid assassin. Genius, mystic, master of language and culture, Hel’s secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection—shibumi.

Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his magnificent Eurasian mistress, Hel faces his most sinister enemy, a super-monolith of espionage and monopoly. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other, shibumi.

Ratings and reviews

Yeesh, unless you're a white guy, this book is pretty harsh on all races, genders and creeds. the voice actors accents are cringe. If you're still on board with all that, it's a violent ego trip on par with the old James Bond films.

Shibumi

About the author

Trevanian (Rodney Whitaker, 1931–2005) was the bestselling author of Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Main, The Summer of Katya, and Incident at Twenty-Mile. He was also an educator in communication and dramatic arts and wrote nonfiction books under his own name. His books have been translated into more than fourteen languages.

Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto... with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.