Quicksand

Description

A seductive psychological thriller about of obsession and jealousy, and a Japanese classic - now with an introduction by Kristen Roupenian, author of 'Cat Person' A seductive psychological thriller about obsession, jealousy and deceit, and a Japanese classic Sonoko Kakiuchi is a cultured Osaka lady in an uninspiring marriage. When she decides to take an art class in town she meets the extraordinary Mitsuko, a woman as beautiful and charismatic as she is cunning. They begin a passionate affair and Sonoko soon finds herself infatuated by Mitsuko, and ensnared in a web of sex, humiliation and deceit. With an introduction by Kristen Roupenian, author of 'Cat Person'

Junichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past. All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.

A riveting tale of malevolent corruption fatally masked by a terrible and deceptive beauty: fatal attraction in a 1920s Japanese setting * Kirkus Reviews * Quicksand reads like a mixture of James Cain and Vladimir Nabokov and teases us with forbidden pleasures * Washington Times * A harrowing black comedy of love and death * Chicago Tribune * Beautifully and mysteriously contrived * Newsday *