The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Softcover

Mishima, Yukio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0399504893 ISBN 13: 9780399504891

Publisher: Perigee Trade, 1981

Synopsis

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

About this title

Review:

"Mishima's greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century" (The Times)

"Explores the viciousness that lies beneath what we imagine to be innocence" (Independent)

"Told with Mishima's fierce attention to naturalistic detail, the grisly tale becomes painfully convincing and yields a richness of psychological and mythic truth" (Sunday Times)

"Coolly exact with his characters and their honourable motives. His aim is to make the destruction of the sailor by his love seem as inevitable as the ocean" (Guardian)

"Mishima's imagery is as artful as a Japanese flower arrangement" (New York Times)

From the Publisher:

One of the nine titles in the Vintage East promotion.

About this edition

• Publisher: Perigee Trade
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0399504893
• ISBN 13: 9780399504891
• Binding: Paperback