Masks (VINTAGE CLASSICS) - Softcover

Enchi, Fumiko

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099589443 ISBN 13: 9780099589440

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2019

Synopsis

Published for the first time in the UK, one of Japan's greatest modern female writers

Ibuki loves widow Yasuko who is young, charming and sparkling with intelligence as well as beauty. His friend, Mikamé, desires her too but that is not the difficulty. What troubles Ibuki is the curious bond that has grown between Yasuko and her mother-in-law, Mieko, a handsome, cultivated yet jealous woman in her fifties, who is manipulating the relationship between Yasuko and the two men who love her.

About this title

Review:

"Clear and powerful" (Kirkus)

"An esoteric masterpiece" (Yukio Mishima)

"A subtle examination of universal female behavior" (People)

"[Enchi’s] allusions to the masks of No plays and to the classic The Tale of Genji, the brilliant way she layers and interweaves the ancient, the more recent past and the present are haunting and rich. A fictional enchantment" (Publishers Weekly)

"Enchi’s writing has some of the same amniotic fluidity as Tolstoy’s, an almost bodily, floating immersion into the effortless habitat of the story" (The American Reader)

Book Description:

Fumiko Enchi was a well known female Japanese writer, whose work is often compared to Yukio Mishima. She won the big Japanese Literary prizes in the 1940s (the Noma & Tanizaki) and has never been published in the UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0099589443
• ISBN 13: 9780099589440
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144