The Secret History of The Lord of Musashi - Couverture souple

Tanizaki, Junichiro

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0099283174 ISBN 13 : 9780099283171

Editeur : Vintage Classics, 2001

Synopsis

These two novellas by the inimitable Tanizaki were among his favourites.

The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi recounts the dark sexual obsessions of a sixteenth-century warlord, accidentally initiated in his youth into the morbid rites attendant upon battle. Based on invented documents that overlap with historical reality, the story unfolds a masterly balance of irony and melodrama, elegance and brutality.

Arrowroot also touches on the pursuit of legend, but in a very different mode. Cast in the uniquely Japanese form of the ‘essay novel’, the narrative blends the stories of two friends on an expedition into the mountains south of Kyoto, one of them following the traces of a medieval myth, the other in search of a more recent, private past.

‘After 20 years of writing novels in a fairly orthodox style, Tanizaki fused two interests - traditional Japanese storytelling and experimental narrative – into a unique style’ New York

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Junichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.

All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

These two short novels, published in the early 1930's ranked high in Tanizaki's own estimation of his work.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Vintage Classics
• Date d'édition: 2001
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0099283174
• ISBN 13: 9780099283171
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 192
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales; sales@vanditmar.nl; ; Hondiuslaan 44; Utrecht; 3528 AB; Pays-Bas