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Life for Sale
  • Published: 4 February 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241333150
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

Life for Sale

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First serialized in Playboy Japan, a stylish, pulp narrative about a failed suicide attempt and the absurd adventures of a young man with nothing to live for

'Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.'
When Hanio Yamada realizes the future holds nothing of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits.

A world of revenge, murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisonous carrots, espionage and code-breaking, a junkie heiress, home-made explosives and decoys reveals itself to the unwitting Hanio. Is there anything he can do to stop it?
  • Published: 4 February 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241333150
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

About the author

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor – the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless short stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he acted. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves; Enjo, which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst For Love and the short-story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship.

The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On November 25th, 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

YM

Also by Yukio Mishima

Beautiful Star
Voices of the Fallen Heroes
Death in Midsummer
The Frolic of the Beasts
Star
Confessions of a Mask
Five Modern No Plays
See all

Praise for Life for Sale

Yields a rare glimpse of the pulp-fiction flipside that partnered the rhapsodic and mystical Mishima... grotesque, melodramatic, spectacular, utterly silly

The Times

It's funny and horrific and curious and thoroughly entertaining and should win Mishima a new generation of fans

The Independent

There is a place in life for the exhilarating, surreal and sometimes downright silly. This novel ticks all the boxes

Spectator

Succeeds in capturing vividly the bathos of the self-pitying modern nihilist... the absurdity of life is conveyed through the tropes of pulp fiction and manga comics

John Gray, The New Statesman

An engaging all-action satire

The Guardian

A writer of immense energy and ability

Time Out