Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1899 and before the Second World War had established himself as his country's leading novelist. Among his major works are Snow Country, A Thousand Cranes and The Master of Go. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, he died in 1972.
This elegant classic by a Nobel laureate portrays a more passionate
side of post-war Kyoto … From maple leave against a wide blue sky
to black camellias standing in a bamboo vase, Kawabata’s prose
gives pride of place to fleeting moments of natural beauty … at
once a well-told story and a loving portrait of a family in
transition
*Telegraph*
This fine novel is full of surprises.. [Kawabata] was a minimalist,
whose work embraces minimalism’s hopeful assumption that, in the
right hands, a string of minute details—a phrase, an unspoken
gesture, a linking of gazes—may unlock a multitude of meanings.
Look closely, listen carefully, is the first tacit message of
Kawabata’s novels. The second is, Let my story burrow inward. There
is more here than meets the eye and ear
*Wall Street Journal*
In this masterpiece Kawabata, his brush dipped in silver, renders
all the excruciating anguish and beauty of post-war Japan
*Edmund White*
It is impossible to understand the soul of Japan without reading
Yasunari Kawabata. Snow Country is his greatest hit, a beautiful
novel that both reflected and shaped Japanese culture, but The
Rainbow - translated into English for the first time - is
Kawabata's missing classic. The Rainbow is where modern Japan
begins - a nation born again in the shadow of the nuclear mushroom
cloud, and in its bitter-sweet tale of two sisters is also the
story of a nation struggling to find a way to live in the rubble
and ruins. As always with Japan's greatest novelist, his themes -
the bonds of family, wounds that will never heal , love that
endures and loser boyfriends - are painfully universal. A book for
anyone who loves Japan, or great story-telling, or both. Dazzling,
brilliant, unmissable.
*Tony Parsons*
Kawabata's novels are among the most affecting and original works
of our time
*The New York Times Book Review*
Kawabata is a poet of the gentlest shades, of the evanescent, the
imperceptible
*Commonweal*
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