Keko's House
14.99 €
The only thing available 3
Keko's House
14.99 €
Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) is a star of 20th-century literature, the most widely read Japanese author in the world, a master of prodigious talent, renowned both for his works, which span a wide range and diversity of genres (novels, plays, short stories, essays), and for his stunning biography (his obsession with bodybuilding, his far-right political leanings, and his hara-kiri after a failed coup attempt). Kyoko's House is the story of four young men, regulars at a salon (or temple parishioners) dominated by the mistress (or priestess) Kyoko. These four represent four facets of the author himself: a sensitive, innocent artist; an energetic boxer obsessed with sports; an unclaimed narcissistic actor, mesmerized by his own beauty; and a businessman who, while feigning careerism, professes nihilism, disdains reality, and believes in the inevitable end of the world. And with them is Kyoko—their mirror, their guide through the hell of modernity, the mistress of the house where they all find refuge and can open their souls. It is the first half of the 1950s—the postwar period in Japan has ended, prosperity is already taking root and gradually emerging from the devastation, but all five of them distrust modernity and, looking out from Kyoko's balcony, see only ruins. The new era is a wall, a dead end, "a gigantic void, shapeless and colorless, like the reflection of a summer sky in a mirror," as critics wrote; a decade and a half later, the same intonation would resound in Hubert Selby Jr. The four guests and Kyoko will briefly find success, but with success comes inevitable decline, disappointment, and death. One day, the doors of Kyoko's house will close. The end of the world is inevitable. We all still live on its threshold. Fans eagerly await the English translation of this novel to this day, and we are publishing it in Russian for the first time.
See also:
- All books by the publisher
- All books by the author
- All books in the series Foreign Literature. Large Books