Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima - ISBN: 9780241301197
Paperback
Hidden desires ignite, a masked struggle in a stifling, wartime Japan.
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  • Paperback

    176 pages

  • Release Date

    15 September 2017

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Summary

The dawning of a young man’s homosexual and sadistic desires. A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. Each night he imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in Guido Reni’s painting; the objects of our hero’s desire are tortured, killed, and maimed, over and over again each night in his private fantasies. He must hide his lust from a homophobic and stiflingly conventional Japan. Self-loathing and desperate, he begins acting out a love affair with the sister of a school friend, while grappling with his hidden desires under the shadow of a Japan under threat from World War Two.

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780241301197
ISBN-10:024130119X
Author:Yukio Mishima, Meredith Weatherby
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin Classics
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:176
Release Date:15 September 2017
Weight:120g
Dimensions:12mm x 128mm x 198mm
Series:Penguin Modern Classics
A-Format
B-Format
Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima - ISBN: 9780241301197
128 × 198 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

A writer of immense energy and ability

Mishima is lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair – Christopher Isherwood
Never has a “confession” been freer from self-pity and emotional over-indulgence * Sunday Times *
A writer of immense energy and ability * Time Out *
A terrific and astringent work of beauty… a work of art * Times Literary Supplement *

About The Author

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of 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 realising this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times.

His major novels include:

  • Confessions of a Mask
  • Forbidden Colours
  • The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
  • The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
  • The Sea of Fertility (tetralogy):
    • Spring Snow
    • Runaway Horses
    • The Temple of Dawn
    • The Decay of the Angel

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