This book is joyful and thrilling. The intimate and familiar story of a single mother struggling to raise a young son is made original and even epic by the sheer elasticity and power of author Helen DeWitt's imagination. Mother and Son, Sybilla and Ludo, both possessed of gifted and versatile minds, are obsessed with the Kurosawa classic, The Seven Samurai (a film I always felt forced to appreciate until I read this book). Syb uses the film to provide the male role models the boy doesn't have in his life, and Ludo uses it to develop his own version of a Samurai test with which he plans to find the best father possible for himself. Armed with the refrain that 'a good samurai will parry the blow' he sets out to test and win over men of samurai mettle who might recognize his merits. The true joy of reading the book comes in the fact that even though mother and son are both geniuses, multi lingual and well versed in history, literature, math and sciences, thier pursuits in learning and discovery seem exciting and comprehensible. What at first description might sound intellectually intimidating (Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Fourier Analysis and a blow by blow with variations on the theme of the Rosetta Stone) are made accessible and often hilarious by the dazzling ingenuity and finesse of the wonderful Dewitt. Reading it made me feel I had suddenly come across a vast unrealized potential in myself for the power of creative thought and the ability to comprehend complex ideas. All this disguised in a book of fabulous adventure and tremendous longing.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prodigy. His musical genius was recognized at the age of three. His father oversaw his musical education and supported him throughout his early life. Certainly, Mozart's life would have been dramatically different without the guiding hand of his father.

In Helen Dewitt's dazzling novel, The Last Samurai, four-year-old Ludo (the name is Latin for "play, mock") is a prodigy of a different sort. He excels not exclusively in one field, but in whatever he chooses to pursue. By the age of six, Ludo had read the Odyssey and Iliad in Greek, Kalilah wa Dimnah in Arabic, the Book of Jonah in Hebrew, and countless novels in English. He had long been finished with algebra. Learning Japanese became an easy hurdle. Ms. Dewitt brings to life a remarkable child who astounds nearly everyone he meets with his display of intellect at such a young age.

But Ludo wanted something that every other child had: a father. Ludo's mother, the complex but likeable Sibylla, tried to augment the child's lack of male role models by frequently watching Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai. Nevertheless, Ludo longed for a father.

At the age of eleven, Ludo finally discovered his father's identity and went to see him, but found him lacking. He then interviewed five different men, with the hope of finding just the right person to become his surrogate father. The six men (his father and the five others) each had to pass a unique test like the samurai in Kurosawa's movie. All six failed. Ms. Dewitt's genius as a storyteller is evident in her ability to avoid a hackneyed plot of single mother/genius son by incorporating Seven Samurai into the narrative, both through quotes from the movie and through the use of similar events.

As Ludo wandered the streets of London aimlessly, he stumbled upon an unlikely friend, who realized that both he and Ludo could benefit from each other's talents. This man eventually came to represent everything Ludo wanted in a father. After searching for a male role model, this find was serendipitous. Like Kurosawa, Ms. Dewitt's final "samurai" is an unexpected choice. The book makes you long for the movie; the movie brings you right back to this delightful book.

The Last Samurai is a heart-warming tale of a boy who has infinitely more than his peers and yet lacks the one thing they take for granted. The book is generously sprinkled with morsels of humor and maintains a swift pace. The Last Samurai is a remarkable experiment in point of view; Ms. Dewitt transfers dexterously among Sibylla's writing, Ludo's diary, Ludo's first-person accounts, and third-person excerpts about various characters from the past.

Ms. Dewitt's writing style evokes a feeling of childish delight, but the reader soon realizes that her words carry much deeper symbolism. She adeptly handles passages usually formidable to writers. Her statements are rarely direct; she is instead the master of the "implied." Her casual writing adds a mask of simplicity to her book-a mask that peels away layer by layer to reveal a gem of a story at its heart.

Ms. Dewitt's opus is poised to take its place as a classic. Only time will tell whether she becomes to literature what Mozart was to music and Kurosawa was to cinema.

The Last Samurai was complex, challenging, and honestly one of the most enjoyable books I've read for a while. This extraordinary story about the bond between Ludo and Sibylla was amazing to follow, from Ludo's intense upbringing by his mother to his departure into the real world in seach of a father, and finally his discovery of the unexpected last samurai.

DeWitt's writing style was unique, a true stream-of-consciousness narrative that let the reader enter the minds of Ludo and Sibylla. Ludo's search for a father, while extremely unorthodox, was moving and heartwarming. Despite the writing style and the wandering search for a father, I thought the pace of the story was just right, keeping the book interesting without being frenetic. I would highly recommend this book to anyone ... don't be put off by the somewhat highbrow subject matter. Ludo's story is about much more than academics. I would, however, recommend seeing Kurosawa's movie before reading the book though- it will give you a better understanding of the search for the Last Samurai.