Satori is a historical novel by American writer Don Winslow about the love of a man and a woman who practise the oldest professions of the world.

In Satori he carries out his first assassination under pressure from American agencies, for which among other things, he is to be rewarded with freedom and given citizenship of Costa Rica.

For the novel's second half (chapters 87-164) Nicholaï acts as an independent arms dealer while he tries to restore his lost heritage which he wants to share with his love Solange Picard.

(Chapter 1-16) China: Nicholaï Hel uses his bogus identity successfully to approach and finally kill his target, the Soviet commissioner Yuri Voroshenin.

When Wu Zhong, a former Bajiquan instructor of the KMT is about to crush him, the monk Xue Win can scarcely save him at last minute.

The SDECE strongly advises Nicholaï to leave Saigon while the Unione Corse already makes attempts on his life and even assigns the killer known as "the Cobra".

As she tells Nicholaï and as his friend de Lhandes later can observe (chapter 149) she cries each time again when Marie (Simone Signoret) must watch her lover dying.

Nicholaï's handler Haverford, a war hero and man of honour, is fluent in three foreign languages (French, Japanese, Vietnamese).

In July 2012 it was reported on the occasion of an interview with Don Winslow that "Warner Brothers picked up his Go-master/hit-man novel Satori as a vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio.

"[1] The same month Don Winslow was also quoted having said he had produced "another screenplay with Shane Salerno called Satori with Leonardo DiCaprio.

"[2][3] Soon after, Deadline Hollywood reported Warner Brothers were "eyeing a 2013 start for Winslow’s spy thriller Satori to star Leonardo DiCaprio as assassin Nicholai Hel.