Thousand Cranes (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Kawabata, Yasunari

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141192607 ISBN 13: 9780141192604

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2011

Synopsis

Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father. He is shocked to find there the mistress's rival and successor, Mrs. Ota, and that the ceremony has been awkwardly arranged for him to meet his potential future bride. But he is most shocked to be drawn into a relationship with Mrs. Ota - a relationship that will bring only suffering and destruction to all of them. Thousand Cranes reflects the tea ceremony's poetic precision with understated, lyrical style and beautiful prose.

About this title

Review:

A literary habitat like no other . . . quietly devastating fiction. . . . Behind a lyrical and understated surface, chaotic passions pulse.
The Independent (London)
Thousand Cranes has the qualities of the best Japanese writing: a stunning economy, delicacy of feeling, and a painter s sensitivity to the visible world.
The Atlantic"

"A literary habitat like no other . . . quietly devastating fiction. . . . Behind a lyrical and understated surface, chaotic passions pulse."
--The Independent (London)
"Thousand Cranes has the qualities of the best Japanese writing: a stunning economy, delicacy of feeling, and a painter's sensitivity to the visible world."
--The Atlantic

-A literary habitat like no other . . . quietly devastating fiction. . . . Behind a lyrical and understated surface, chaotic passions pulse.-
--The Independent (London)
-Thousand Cranes has the qualities of the best Japanese writing: a stunning economy, delicacy of feeling, and a painter's sensitivity to the visible world.-
--The Atlantic

About the Author:

Yasunari Kawabata was born near Osaka in 1899 and was orphaned at the age of two. His first stories were published while he was still in high school and he decided to become a writer. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924 and a year later made his first impact on Japanese letters with Izu Dancer. He soon became a leading figure the lyrical school that offered the chief challenge to the proletarian literature of the late 1920s. His writings combine the two forms of the novel and the haiku poems, which within restrictions of a rigid metre achieves a startling beauty by its juxtaposition of opposite and incongruous terms. Snow Country (1956) and Thousand Cranes (1959) brought him international recognition. Kawabata died by his own hand, on April 16 1972.

Thousand Cranes is translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker (1921-2007), who was a prominent scholar of Japanese literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141192607
• ISBN 13: 9780141192604
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112