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.

Mishima's 1960 novel is a portrait of love and marriage in later life and features his best female character - the irrepressible Kazu. For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness - then she falls in love. The man is one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, and she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit. Eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. After the Banquet is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare and love in later life. 'An exquisitely paced high comedy at once characterized by humor and restraint...features a magnificently ebullient heroine as she embarks upon one more adventure in love' Kirkus ' Mishima's most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction' New York Times

Details

ISBN13: 9780099282785
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 288
Edition:
Publication Date: 01 Jun 2001
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.9(H)x12.9(L)x1.8(W)207
Weight (gm): 207

Author Biography

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

Reviews

Kazu is the biggest and most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career * New Yorker *
His most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction * New York Times *
Japan's foremost man of letters * Spectator *
Direct yet allusive, poetic...an amazing feat * Atlantic *