AUSTRALIA-WIDE LOW FLAT RATE $9.90

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Beautiful Star

Yukio Mishima Stephen Dodd

$26.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Penguin
04 August 2022
The novel Mishima considered to be his masterpiece- a tale of family, nuclear war, love and UFOs.

The Osugi family have come to a realization. Each of them hails from a different planet. Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus. Already seen as oddballs in their small Japanese town in the 1960s, this extra-terrestrial knowledge brings them closer together; they climb mountains to wait for UFOs, study at home together and regard their human neighbours with a kindly benevolence.

But Father, Juichiro, is worried about the bomb. He writes letters to Khrushchev, trying to warn everyone he can of the terrible threat. After all, humans may be terribly flawed, but aren't they worth saving? He sends out a coded message in the newspaper to find other aliens. But there are other extra-terrestrials out there, ones who do not look so kindly on the flaws and foibles of humans. And a charming young man, who claims to be from Venus too, tempts daughter Akiko away from the family. . .
By:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Penguin
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 135mm,  Spine: 18mm
Weight:   242g
ISBN:   9780241545560
ISBN 10:   0241545560
Series:   Penguin Modern Classics
Pages:   240
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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.

Reviews for Beautiful Star

Ordinary people harbour the grandest (and most terrible) thoughts in a cosmological fable as disconcerting as it is funny: behind the simplest actions lie visions of worlds in collision. -- Simon Ings * The Times * Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway * Life Magazine * A writer of immense energy and ability * Time Out * One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century * New Yorker * The wunderkind of the Japanese literary world... an extraordinary literary talent * The Times Literary Supplement * Among Japan's most celebrated post-war authors * Little White Lies * The Oscar Wilde of Japan ... one of Japan's great novelists ... his subtlety, warmth and wit shine through * Telegraph * A mixture of humour, high literary seriousness and flying saucers ... remarkable -- Sam Leith * Spectator *


See Inside

See Also