Lesley downer books

Lesley downer geisha
Lesley is an author, historian and all-round Japan buff.
Lesley Downer is a Japan expert, author, journalist, and historian.

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Lesley Downer

Goodreads Author

Born

London, The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.lesleydowner.com

Twitter

LesleyDowner

Genre

Historical Fiction, Nonfiction

Member Since

July 2009

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/lesleydowner

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I write historical fiction set in Japan - women’s untold stories, largely true and based on meticulous and detailed research, though primarily, of course, good yarns. I’ve just finished The Shogun’s Queen, the fourth of The Shogun Quartet, four novels set in the nineteenth century during the tumultuous fifteen years when Japan was convulsed by civil war and transformed from rule by the shoguns into a society that looked to the west.
Preorder: http://bit.ly/TheShogunsQueen
The second, The Last Concubine, was shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year 2009 and translated into 30 languages. The other two novels are The Courtesan and the Samurai and The Samurai’s Daughter. My non-fiction on Japan includes Geisha: The Remarkable Truth Behind the I write historical fiction set in Japan - women’s untold stories, largely true and ba

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I am pleased to have author Lesley Downer on my blog today! Her travels brought her to Japan, inspired her to learn the language, and eventually write historical fiction and non-fiction books about the country she’d fallen in love with.

I enjoyed her novel Shogun Queen, a captivating and engrossing novel set in age of the samurai, and can attest to her extensive knowledge of the country and its history! Rich in detail, Lesley creates a world of princesses, shoguns and emperors that lives and breathes.

I hope you enjoy learning more about Lesley, her writing, and passion for everything Japanese.

Please tell me a little bit about yourself, your books and writing career.

I’ve always been a traveller and I’ve always loved stories. My parents are Canadian – my mother is Chinese Canadian, my father Irish Scottish Canadian. My father was a China specialist and spent a lot of time in Laos and Vietnam. I grew up surrounded by Chinese books and my parents’ friends – like ‘Uncle’ Lao and ‘Uncle’ Liu, whom I only realised in my teens were Chinese.

As soon as I f

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Lesley is an author, historian and all-round Japan buff. Her mother was Chinese and her father a professor of Chinese, so she grew up in a house full of books on Asia. She ended up almost by accident in Japan and became fascinated by the country, its culture and its people. She lived there on and off for some fifteen years and often goes back. She has written many books, non-fiction and fiction, about it.

She’s been lucky enough to travel all over the world to write and also gives lectures – at the Japan Society, Asia House, the Royal Geographic Society, the British Museum, the Japan Society in New York and Japan Societies and Asia Societies across the US and the UK. She lectured on a vast residential ship called The World that circles the globe forever like a modern-day Flying Dutchman. She was the historical consultant for Northern Ballet’s spectacular 2020 ballet Geisha and appears on Netflix in Age of the Samurai: Battle for Japan and in Pernel Media’s Sekigahara.

She taught for four years on the MA programme in Creative Writing (non-fiction) at City Universi