Confessions of a Mask

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Description

The dawning of a young man's homosexual and sadistic desires A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. Each night he imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in Guido Reni's painting; the objects of our hero's desire are tortured, killed and maimed, over and over again each night in his private fantasies. He must hide his lust from a homophobic and stiflingly conventional Japan. Self-loathing and desperate, he begins acting out a love affair with the sister of a school friend, while grappling with his hidden desires under the shadow of a Japan under threat from World War Two.

Reviews

Mishima is lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair -- Christopher Isherwood
Never has a "confession" been freer from self-pity and emotional over-indulgence * Sunday Times *
A writer of immense energy and ability * Time Out *
A terrific and astringent work of beauty... a work of art * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Bio

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 realising this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature three times. His major novels include Confessions of a Mask, Forbidden Colours (also a Penguin Modern Classic), The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea and the tetralogy The Sea of Fertility- Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn and The Decay of the Angel.