Yasunari Kawabata – författare

Med regnbågen som sällskap av Yasunari Kawabata i svensk översättning från japanska av Lars Vargö

Handlingen utspelar sig strax efter Andra Världskriget kriget och tar upp känsliga ämnen som otrohet, utomäktenskapliga barn och abort – och inte minst hur människorna lever i den tidens kulturella brytningstid i Japan.

En arkitekt och hans två äldsta döttrar bor i Tokyo, men handlingen förläggs i huvudsak i den gamla kejserliga huvudstaden Kyoto, en stad som hade en särskild attraktionskraft på författaren. 1968 tilldelats Kawabata nobelpriset i litteratur, ”för hans berättarkonst, som med fin känsla uttrycker japanskt väsen i dess egenart”. Romanen förmedlar värdefulla insikter för den intresserade.

Läs mer på www.fripress.se

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the novelist Yasunari Kawabata felt the essence of his art was to be found not in his longer works but in a series of short stories—which he called "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories"—written over the span of his career. In them we find loneliness, love, and the passage of time, demonstrating the range and complexity of a true master of short fiction.

Available in English for the very first time, a powerful, poignant novel about three half sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country.

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. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.