Yasunari Kawabata HOUSE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES First Edition
First UK edition first print hardback of HOUSE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES and other stories by Yasunari Kawabata (translated by Edward G. Seidensticker, with an Introduction by Yukio Mishima) and published by The Quadriga Press in 1969.The book is in very good condition (red cloth boards with silver lettering to spine) with light bumping to the corners. The book is in a very good- unclipped dust jacket which has light creasing, rubbing and chipping to the edges and light age related staining here and there but mainly to the spine. Still very presentable. Internally the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears or inscriptions.
Nobel prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata is noted for his combination of a traditional Japanese aesthetic with modernist, often surreal trends. In these three tales, superbly translated by Edward Seidensticker, erotic fantasy is underlaid with longing and memories of past loves.
In the title story, the protagonist visits a brothel where elderly men spend a chaste but lecherous night with a drugged, unconscious virgin. As he admires the girl's beauty, he recalls his past womanizing, and reflects on the relentless course of old age.
In One Arm, a young girl removes her right arm and gives it to the narrator to take home for the night; a surreal seduction follows as he tries to allay its fears, caresses it, and even replaces his own right arm with it.
The protagonist of Of Birds and Beasts prefers the company of his pet birds and dogs to people, yet for him all living beings are beautiful objects which, though they give him pleasure, he treats with casual cruelty.
Beautiful yet chilling, richly poetic yet subtly disturbing, these stories make compelling reading and reaffirm Kawabata's status as a world-class writer.
149 pages including Ilustrations and Notes
SBN: 9000608001
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Yasunari Kawabata HOUSE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES First Edition