Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #704737 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Synopsis
Seeking revenge on the women who betrayed him, Shunsuke, an aging misogynist, enlists the help of Yuichi, a young homosexual, whose experiences in the gay underworld vividly depict the corruption of postwar Tokyo. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Customer Reviews

Not his best, but still good
The other reviewer has, I think, missed a lot in this book, which shows a side of Mishima that is only really hinted at in other works, and a side of Japan not often seen in literature. Yes, sometimes it is slow, but the characters are, I think, much more developed (and therefore interesting) than those of the Sea of Fertility novels. His only better book is the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. By the way, he never won the Nobel Prize (Kawabata got Japan's 'turn') - a possible factor in his suicide, according to some.

Yukio Mishimas worst book
I can't say what it is about this book that makes it so unreadable; it may be a translation which fails to capture the authorial tone or it may be just a deeply uninvolving story. Whatever the reason, this is the only book written by Mishima which I haven't finished. It really just wasn't worth the effort of pushing forward because by half way through I no longer cared what was going to happen next.
Mishima has written some great books; The Sound of the Waves, The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea, and the Sea of Fertility series. Any one of these would provide an interesting and enjoyable place to start reading the work of this Nobel-Prize winning author.
This book is at best a curiousity: an example of how some times even the very best craftsmen can produce a turkey.