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Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker
Thousand Cranes
3.61 115
With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, the rival of his dead father's mistress. A tale of desire, regret, and sensual nostalgia, every... show more
With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, the rival of his dead father's mistress. A tale of desire, regret, and sensual nostalgia, every gesture has a meaning, and even the most fleeting touch or casual utterance has the power to illuminate entire lives--sometimes in the same moment that it destroys them. Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker."A novel of exquisite artistry...rich suggestibility...and a story that is human, vivid and moving."--New York Herald TribuneKawabata is a poet of the gentlest shades, of the evanescent, the imperceptible. This is a tragedy in soft focus, but its passions are fierce."--Commonweal
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780679762652 (0679762655)
Publisher: Vintage
Pages no: 147
Edition language: Japanese
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Community Reviews
Book Trauma
Book Trauma rated it
4.0
Death and sadness are words that seem to go together in a lot of Japanese literature and nobody, it seems, is better at it than Kawabata. He draws his characters as deftly as the the porcelain and china that is used for the tea ceremony itself.His minimalistic style suits his subject and his charact...
Chrissie's Books
Chrissie's Books rated it
3.0 A Thousand Cranes
Beautiful, but I have a hard time with the heavy symbolism. The tea ceremony plays a central role. A very short audiobook. Excellent narration by Brian Nishii.
AC
AC rated it
Fine book - but very strange, very japanese, austere to the point of the vanishing point... a series of strange love affairs are reduced to identifications with three-hundred year tea bowls fired in the kilns of 9th cen. tea masters. The underlying idea is quite fascinating, however. The tea-ceremon...
The Ninja Reader
The Ninja Reader rated it
4.0
I read this book three times in French, once in Bulgarian, and I can't stop to admire it.
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