Description:
For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom from "one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century" (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker)
Winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
Brief description: Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) completed his first novel the year he entered the University of Tokyo and his last novel the day of his death. He is the author of numerous novels, stories, plays, and essays. Gore Vidal once said of him: "I only regret we never met, for friends found him a good companion, a fine drinking partner, and fun to cruise with." Mishima committed suicide by ceremonial seppuku after a failed coup d'e´tat intended to restore pre-WWII power to the emperor of Japan.
Review Quotes: There may be no writer more autobiographical than Yukio Mishima. He resembles Ce´line and Genet, writers who were not political writers but who were working out the crisis of being alive, the crisis of experience itself. That's precisely the way it is transcendent--it goes beyond the visible world into a world in which being alive makes sense.--Philip Glass