The Rainbow

With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters - born to the same father but different mothers - struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father's first child - haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together - seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances.

And both sisters find themselves unable to outrun the legacies of their late mothers.

A thoughtful, probing novel about the enduring traumas of war, the unbreakable bonds of family and the inescapability of the past, The Rainbow is a searing, melancholy work from one of Japan's greatest writers.

Reviews:

'In this masterpiece Kawabata, his brush dipped in silver, renders all the excruciating anguish and beauty of post-war Japan' - Edmund White

'This elegant classic by a Nobel laureate portrays a more passionate side of post-war Kyoto… From maple leave against a wide blue sky to black camellias standing in a bamboo vase, Kawabata's prose gives pride of place to fleeting moments of natural beauty… at once a well-told story and a loving portrait of a family in transition.' - Christopher Harding, Telegraph

'This fine novel is full of surprises.. [Kawabata] was a minimalist, whose work embraces minimalism's hopeful assumption that, in the right hands, a string of minute details-a phrase, an unspoken gesture, a linking of gazes-may unlock a multitude of meanings. Look closely, listen carefully, is the first tacit message of Kawabata's novels. The second is, Let my story burrow inward. There is more here than meets the eye and ear.' - Brad Leithauser, Wall Street Journal