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The Frolic of the Beasts
  • Published: 5 December 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241675311
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

The Frolic of the Beasts

Formats & editions
Paperback
5 Dec 2023
EBook
4 Apr 2019
Paperback
4 Apr 2019
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New in Penguin Japanese Classics: a gripping novel about a love affair gone wrong

Introducing Penguin Japanese Classics: a collection of some of Japan's most celebrated and ground-breaking 20th century writers, with covers inspired by Japanese art and design. Taking us from a sun-drenched affair in a seaside town to an underground 'ark' full of shadows and eccentrics, with stops at mountains of skulls, lonely apartments and boarding school dormitories, this series is perfect for new and long-time readers of Japanese literature.

Koji, a young student, has fallen hopelessly in love with the beautiful, enigmatic Yuko. But she is married to the literary critic and serial philanderer Ippei. Tormented by desire and anger, Koji is driven to an act of violence that will bind this strange, terrible love triangle together for the rest of their lives. A starkly compelling story of lust, guilt and punishment, The Frolic of the Beasts explores the masks we wear in life, and what happens when they slip.

'One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century' - New Yorker

Translated by Andrew Clare
  • Published: 5 December 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241675311
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor – the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless short stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he acted. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves; Enjo, which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst For Love and the short-story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship.

The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On November 25th, 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

YM

Also by Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
Spring Snow
Confessions of a Mask
Voices of the Fallen Heroes
Death in Midsummer
Beautiful Star
Life for Sale
See all

Praise for The Frolic of the Beasts

Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist

New York Times

Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway

Life Magazine

A writer of immense energy and ability

Time Out

This morose little gem boasts its share of sensuous depravity

Wall Street Journal

A sexually and psychologically complex novel... in a honed translation by Andrew Clare

Damian Flanagan, TLS
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