The Frolic of the Beasts

New in Penguin Japanese Classics- a gripping novel about a love affair gone wrongIntroducing Penguin Japanese Classics- a collection of some of Japan's most celebrated and ground-breaking 20th century writers, with covers inspired by Japanese art and design. Taking us from a sun-drenched affair in a seaside town to an underground 'ark' full of shadows and eccentrics, with stops at mountains of skulls, lonely apartments and boarding school dormitories, this series is perfect for new and long-time readers of Japanese literature.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. Tormented by desire and anger, Koji is driven to an act of violence that will bind this strange, terrible love triangle together for the rest of their lives. A starkly compelling story of lust, guilt and punishment, The Frolic of the Beasts explores the masks we wear in life, and what happens when they slip.'One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century' - New YorkerTranslated by Andrew Clare

This morose little gem boasts its share of sensuous depravity Wall Street Journal
Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist New York Times
Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway Life Magazine
A writer of immense energy and ability Time Out
A sexually and psychologically complex novel... in a honed translation by Andrew Clare TLS

Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of the Japan's most important writers. His books broke social boundaries and taboos at a time when Japan found itself in a state of rapid social change. His interests, besides writing, included body-building, acting and practising as a Samurai. In 1970 he attempted to start a military coup, which failed. Upon realizing this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature three times.

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