I’m reading what seems to me to be a jewel of a book by the poet and writing scholar Robert Graves. It’s called “The Islands of Unwisdom,” a novel of Spanish colonization in the South Pacific that takes place roughly in the same time period as Clavel’s “Shogun.” I don’t know very much about Graves other than he was a contemporary at Oxford of Tolkien and Lewis, but apparently had a less than admirable private life. He supposedly dismissed his historical novels as mere thrillers, but I find “Islands” quite captivating. I have no appetite for sentimentality in historical fiction, prefer it to be based on actual characters who lived, and enjoy insights into the clash of cultures, especially East and West. This work fits nicely into that niche, and I may also investigate his “Count Belisarius.”