The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Yukio Mishima author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:11th Mar '99

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea cover

'A major work of art' Time

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

A tale of youth and warped masculinity, this is the suspenseful, lyrical and page-turning Japanese classic.

A band of thirteen-year-old boys reject the stupidity of the adult world. They decide it is illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call ‘objectivity’. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship’s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first, but it is not long before they conclude that he is, in fact, soft and romantic. They regard this disillusionment as an act of betrayal on his part – and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

‘Mishima’s greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century’ The Times

TRANSLATED BY JOHN NATHAN

Mishima's greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century * The Times *
Explores the viciousness that lies beneath what we imagine to be innocence * Independent *
Told with Mishima's fierce attention to naturalistic detail, the grisly tale becomes painfully convincing and yields a richness of psychological and mythic truth * Sunday Times *
Coolly exact with his characters and their honourable motives. His aim is to make the destruction of the sailor by his love seem as inevitable as the ocean * Guardian *
Mishima's imagery is as artful as a Japanese flower arrangement * New York Times *

ISBN: 9780099284796

Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 10mm

Weight: 109g

144 pages