Confessions of a Mask

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.

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.

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 *