Lavishly opulent stories of sensual obsession, cultural heritage, and mythological creatures—translated into English for the first time—from a classic Japanese writer Featuring “The Qilin,” “The Siren’s Lament,” and the novella Killing O-Tsuya, this gorgeous new edition of 3 classic works translated by Bryan Karetnyk distills the essence of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's shorter fiction: the co-mingling of Japanese and Chinese mythologies, the chillingly dark side of desire, and the paper-thin line between the sublime and the depraved. “The Qilin”: The sage Confucius travels to a kingdom ruled by a struggling duke, whose pursuit of virtue is threatened by his consort's obsession desire for pleasure. Killing O-Tsuya: A naïve servant elopes with his master's daughter, only to be plunged headlong into a world of murder and corruption. “The Siren’s Lament”: Exhausted by a lifestyle of never-ending debauchery, a young prince finds himself in possession of a dazzling, beguiling mermaid. The essential short works of one of the most important and widely-read figured in modern Japanese literature, author of hugely popular works including In Praise of Shadows, The Makioka Sisters, and Naomi; renowned for his investigations of family dynamics, eroticism, and cultural identity.
Authors
See Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. 1886年7月24日東京・日本橋生まれ。東京帝国大学国文科中退。既成の倫理観に縛られることなく悪魔的な美と大胆なエロスを追求、独自の耽美的な世界を構築した。1965年7月30日、死去。
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.
