After the Banquet

Yukio Mishima

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Paperback

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Mishima's 1960 novel is a portrait of love and marriage in later life and features his best female character - the irrepressible Kazu.

For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness - then she falls in love.

The man is one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, and she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit. Eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. After the Banquet is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare and love in later life.

'An exquisitely paced high comedy at once characterized by humor and restraint...features a magnificently ebullient heroine as she embarks upon one more adventure in love' Kirkus

‘[Mishima's] most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction’ New York Times

Published: 1 July 2010
ISBN: 9781407053103
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 288

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Praise for After the Banquet

Kazu is the biggest and most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career
New Yorker

His most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction
New York Times

Japan's foremost man of letters
Spectator

Direct yet allusive, poetic...an amazing feat
Atlantic