Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata (Author), Lane Dunlop (Translator), J. Martin Holman (Translator)
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Nobel laureate Kawabata is best known in the West for such novels as Snow Country and Thousand Cranes, yet his short stories, written over 50 years, seem to contain his essence as a writer. Here sensitively translated are 70 of them, most written in Kawabata's youth and usually no more than a page or two in length, though the last one, "Gleanings from Snow Country," is somewhat longer and was written just before Kawabata's suicide in 1972; it is a miniaturization of the highly praised novel of the same name. The tales are variously realistic, allegorical and fantastic; and, as in the novels, the principal themes are love, loneliness, social change, man's relation with nature and death. Each story exhibits some sharp and often subtle perception of life (in Kawabata's world, stillness can "resound" and men listening to a woman's laugh can experience "a strange kind of aural jealousy"); and each, like a haiku or classic Zen painting, suggests far more than it states.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
These 60 stories by 1968 Nobel laureate Kawabata are engagingly and sensitively translated. The stories, never more than three pages long and often only a page, were written from 1923 to 1972, the year of Kawabata's suicide. Some are cryptic, permitting only guessed-at meanings, others whimsically humorous; some express poignant emotions, others epiphanies; some deal with everyday life, others with ghosts; some with samurais, others with peasants. Though they all take place in 20th-century Japan, these stories are timeless and essentially universal. Kawabata is a master storyteller reminiscent of James Joyce, but with a smaller, sharper, more incisive vision. Highly recommended. Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Kawabata does for the short story what Paul Klee did for painting and Webern for music, showing how to get the profoundest experience and the surest sense of artistic form into an extremely small work. These stories inspire and go on inspiring. They make writing a story seem-and it may be-as natural a result of deep excited feeling as writing a poem."--Kenneth Koch
"These stories are jewels, indeed, each one has a soul, a life, or a whole work distilled to palm-sized proportions."--Chicago Tribune
"There are few other writers who could invoke such a lasting memory of a single image with so few words."--San Francisco Chronicle
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title."These stories are jewels, indeed, each one has a soul, a life, or a whole work distilled to palm-sized proportions."--Chicago Tribune
"There are few other writers who could invoke such a lasting memory of a single image with so few words."--San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1899 and before World War II had established himself as his country's leading novelist. Among his major works are Snow Country, A Thousand Cranes, and The Master of Go. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, he died in 1972.
Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
-The Art of Living and Impermanence
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