192 pages
English language
Published Dec. 16, 1996
Nobel Prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer's masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.
At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages, a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.
A beautiful little book on the powerlessness of the poet to be anything other than what they are.
Even as it gently reveals an empathy for these innocent and wise souls it doesn't shy away from the capriciousness of what they feel, or the potential selfishness in what they are.
No matter what else, this book will make you want to go skiing in Japan.
Mystical and dreamlike in a similar vein to Halldor Laxness, another island poet/novelist. This is beautiful, moving, and guided by the snowy mountains and starry skies that surround the story.
