The Boy and the Samurai / Saru, a street urchin in sixteenth-century Japan, learns to survive by his wits in a city torn by war. "By using an episodic narrative construction and satirically presenting a cross section of a social order with its customs and attitudes, Haugaard has created a picturesque novel. And imbued with the author's characteristic passion for history, his moral intensity, and his hatred of despotism and brutality, the book suggests analogies to our own turbulent times."
