DeWitt, Helen 1957–

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DeWitt, Helen 1957–

PERSONAL: Born 1957, in Takoma Park, MD. Education: Attended Smith College, 1975; attended Somerville College, Oxford, c. 1988–89.

ADDRESSES: Home—Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. Office—c/o Author Mail, Hyperion, 77 West 66th St., 11th Floor, New York, NY 10023.

CAREER: Author.

AWARDS, HONORS: International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award nomination, 2002, for The Last Samurai.

WRITINGS:

The Last Samurai, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Helen DeWitt's novel The Last Samurai is the story of Ludo, a child prodigy who loves to learn, can read at age two, and has learned several languages by the time he is four years old. Ludo is raised by his single mother, Sibylla, who is struggling to make ends meet while working as a typist in England during the 1980s. Both Sibylla and Ludo are fans of Akira Kurosawa's film The Seven Samurai, and watch it many times a week. Sibylla believes that The Seven Samurai will serve her son as a guide or moral development. As Ludo gets older he becomes curious about his father, about whom his mother will tell him nothing, and at age eleven he seeks out seven men he sees as potential father figures, among them a travel writer, a painter, and a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer. Ludo's search for answers about his father ultimately leads him to a better understanding of his mother and of himself.

The Last Samurai drew critical praise from many quarters, as much for its compelling plot as its learnedness, a reflection of DeWitt's grounding in philosophy, literature, and the classics. Calling the novel "unlike anything you've ever read," Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewer Greg Changnon praised it as a work of prose "as comfortable dipping into Japanese and Arabic as it is quoting the screenplay of Akira Kurosawa's 'The Seven Samurai.'" While praising the book as "witty and learned," Observer contributor David Mattin was quick to bolster the courage of potential readers, noting that The Last Samurai "does not bash the reader over the head with writerly prose"; instead, he explained, DeWitt spins a plot "that unashamedly attempts to charm." Calling DeWitt's fiction debut "ambitious," a Publishers Weekly contributor praised The Last Samurai as "energetic and relentlessly unpredictable," strengthened by the relationship between Sibylla and her son. In an enthusiastic review for the Washington Post Book World in which he dubbed the novelist "this year's It Girl of postmodernism," Steven Moore noted that DeWitt "is formidably intelligent but engagingly witty … [with her] wide-ranging interests and en extraordinarily original mind; she is a joy to read." Booklist contributor Grace Fill called The Last Samurai "a touching story of a child's maturing love [that] … illuminates the ways in which a parent's issues can overtly or covertly affect the life of a child."