Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world\"s greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith Filled with rich description and luxurious beauty, these ten tales of loss and longing from one of Japan\"s greatest writers show the pull between duty and desire, ecs...

\"There is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain\" A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him....

Beautiful Star is a 1962 tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs, and was considered by Mishima to be one of his very best books....

Generally regarded both in Japan and in the West as his most successful novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion brings together all Mishima\"s preoccupations with violence, desire, religious life and the history of his own nation....

Mishima\"s greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century\" The Times 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\"....

Beautiful Star is a 1962 tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs, and was considered by Mishima to be one of his very best books....

The gripping story of an affair gone horribly wrong, from one of Japan\"s greatest twentieth-century writers 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....

A haunting novella of fame and disillusionment by a Japanese literary icon All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention. They would kill for a moment alone with him....

\"Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.\" When Hanio Yamada realises the future holds little of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits....

After the early death of her philandering husband, Etsuko moves into her father-in-law\"s house, where she numbly submits to the old man\"s advances. But soon she finds herself in love with the young servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet invigorated by her desire, she makes her move, with catastrophic consequences....

A classic, elegant romance set in a Japanese fishing village. \"A work of art...altogether a joyous and lovely thing\" New York Times Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village....

\"One of the outstanding writers of the world\" New York Times Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer....

\"A major work of art\" Time 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\"....

An acute psychological portrait of a marriage where lofty traditions clash with appetite and ambition For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. But when the she falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife....

Was it death he was now waiting for? Or a wild ecstasy of the senses?\' For the young army officer of Yukio Mishima\'s seminal story, \'Patriotism, \' death and ecstasy become elementally intertwined. With his unique rigor and passion, Mishima hones in on the body as the great tragic stage for all we call social, ritual, political....