Helen DeWitt\'s 2000 debut, The Last Samurai , was destined to become a cult classic (Miramax).
Or he may find a real Samurai and save a mother who thinks boredom a fate worse than death..
He may not live to see twelve.
He\'ll be punched, sliced, and threatened with retribution.
At eleven, inspired by his own take on the classic film, he sets out on a secret quest for the father he never knew.
But Ludo is obsessed with the one thing he wants and doesn\'t know: his father\'s name. (Is he a prodigy, a genius? Readers looking over Ludo\'s shoulder find themselves easily reading Greek and more.) Lacking male role models for a fatherless boy, Sibylla turns to endless replays of Kurosawa\'s masterpiece Seven Samurai .
Mill (taught Greek at three) and Yo Yo Ma (Bach at two) claimed the methods would work with any child; when these succeed with the boy Ludo, he causes havoc at school and is home again in a month.
S.
J.
High-minded principles of child-rearing work disastrously well.
The enterprising publisher sold the rights in twenty countries, so Why not just, \'destined to become a classic?\' (Garth Risk Hallberg) And why must cultists tell the uninitiated it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise? Sibylla, an American-at-Oxford turned loose on London, finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand.
Helen DeWitt\'s 2000 debut, The Last Samurai , was destined to become a cult classic (Miramax)
