The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea

VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS – five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disillusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

Also includes the novel The Sound of Waves - a timeless story of first love set in a remote fishing village in Japan, this romantic, gentle tale displays a different side to Mishima's sensual yet coolly detached style.