Published: 1 June 2001
ISBN: 9780099285670
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
RRP: $26.00

Categories:

Translated works

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Yukio Mishima

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Mighty Ape

Considered one of Mishima's masterpieces, this novel is a fictionalised version of real events - the torching of a Kyoto temple by a disturbed Buddhist acolyte in 1950.

This is Mishima's novel about the pressure of living an idealised life. It tells a fictionalised account of real events - the lonely acolyte who destroyed a famous Kyoto temple.

Mizoguchi grows up a lonely boy in a poor family, a hopeless and frustrated stutterer. Only tales of the beauty of a famous temple in Kyoto, told by his dying father, sustain him. Taunted by his schoolmates, he eventually escapes to become an acolyte at the temple. But there, witness to acts of callous violence and terrified by the bombing of the war, Mizoguchi develops an all-consuming obsession with the temple's preservation - until the beauty of the place itself starts to feel like his deadliest enemy.

This powerful story of sacrifice and unattainable ideals brings together Mishima's preoccupations with violence, desire, religion and national history to dazzling effect.

'One of the outstanding writers of the world' New York Times

Published: 1 June 2001
ISBN: 9780099285670
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
RRP: $26.00

Categories:

Translated works

Also by Yukio Mishima

See all

Praise for The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

A dark vision...a beautiful, disturbing novel
Los Angeles Times

Mishima writes with a fury that seldom flags
Glasgow Herald

Glitters with images of beauty and destruction, cruelty and sacrifice, dedication and betrayal
The Times

An amazing literary feat
Chicago Tribune

I adore Mishima's prose and vivid descriptions. They pull me out of my daily reality
Amanda Harlech, Harpers Bazaar

Read simply as the story of the man who burned a famous building, it is constantly absorbing. But additional layers of meaning seem to reveal themselves, different for each reader.