The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
  • Published: 31 May 1994
  • ISBN: 9780679750154
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $38.00

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

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Paperback
3 Dec 2019
Paperback
3 Mar 2000
Hardback
16 Jul 2024
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
31 May 1994
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VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL PRESENTS A SELECTION OF MODERN JAPANESE CLASSICS
A shocking tale about a violent group of teenage boys and the dangers of disillusionment from three-time Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima.

A novel from "one of the outstanding writers of the world” (The New York Times) that explores the vicious nature of youth that is sometimes mistaken for innocence. • “A major work of art.” —Time

Thirteen-year-old Noboru is a member of a gang of highly philosophical teenage boys who reject the tenets of the adult world — to them, adult life is illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental. When Noboru’s widowed mother is romanced by Ryuji, a sailor, Noboru is thrilled. He idolizes this rugged man of the sea as a hero. But his admiration soon turns to hatred, as Ryuji forsakes life onboard the ship for marriage, rejecting everything Noboru holds sacred. Upset and appalled, he and his friends respond to this apparent betrayal with a terrible ferocity.
  • Published: 31 May 1994
  • ISBN: 9780679750154
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $38.00
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About the author

Yukio Mishima

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

Also by Yukio Mishima

Confessions of a Mask
Thirst for Love
Spring Snow
The Frolic of the Beasts
Death in Midsummer
Star
Beautiful Star
See all

Praise for The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

Mishima's greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century

The Times

Explores the viciousness that lies beneath what we imagine to be innocence

Independent

Told with Mishima's fierce attention to naturalistic detail, the grisly tale becomes painfully convincing and yields a richness of psychological and mythic truth

Sunday Times

Coolly exact with his characters and their honourable motives. His aim is to make the destruction of the sailor by his love seem as inevitable as the ocean

Guardian

Mishima's imagery is as artful as a Japanese flower arrangement

New York Times

  • "Brilliantly prosed and composed ... a major work of art." --Time
  • "This novel is brilliant in the conciseness of its narrative."--The Nation
  • "Mishima is like Stendhal in his precise psychological analyses, like Dostoevsky in his explorations of darkly destructive personalities." --Christian Science Monitor
  • "[The Sea of Fertility] is a literary legacy on the scale of Proust's." --National Review