Thirst for Love

by Yukio Mishima

Overview

Full of sexual torment, jealousy, and impossible-to-resolve longing, this novel from “one of the outstanding writers of the world" (The New York Times) presents a riveting portrait of the corrosive power of frustrated desire.

The protaganist is Etsuko, a young widow whose philandering husband died horribly from typhoid. After moving into the house of her father-in-law, her misery deepens as she numbly submits to the old man's advances. But soon Etsuko falls in love with the young servant, Saburo. Tormented by his indifference yet invigorated by her anguish, she makes one last, catastrophic, bid for his attentions. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375705076
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/22/1999
Series:	Perigee Japanese Library Series
Edition description:	1 VINTAGE
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	485,593
Product dimensions:	5.24(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.47(d)

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

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

“Like his Western counterparts—Mann, Joyce, Pound, Elliot, and Yeats—Mishima manages in his art to attain the laughter of the gods.” —San Francisco Examiner

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.

Library Journal