After the Banquet

by Yukio Mishima

Overview

A portrait of a marriage in which lofty principles clash fatally with appetite and ambition—featuring a middle-aged restaurant owner who is "the biggest and the most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career" (The New Yorker).

“One of the outstanding writers of the world." —The New York Times

For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. But when the middle-aged entrepreneur falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife. In time, however, Kazu decides to resurrect her husband's political career. She embarks on a series of compromises and evasions that will force her to choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375705151
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/22/1999
Series:	Perigee Japanese Library Series
Edition description:	1 VINTAGE
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	417,412
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.66(d)
Lexile:	1090L (what's this?)

About the Author

YUKIO MISHIMA was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944. He established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.

Editorial Reviews

"Kazu is the biggest and the most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career." —The New Yorker

"Always fascinating and frequently brilliant." —Christian Science Monitor

“One of the outstanding writers of the world.” —The New York Times

From the Publisher

Published in the United States during the 1960s but written years earlier, this Mishima trio, while vastly different in plot, all sport the common theme of idealism destroyed by reality. Nearly three decades after his death, Mishima continues to be a compelling novelist. (LJ 1/15/63, LJ 3/15/68, LJ 9/1/69) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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