The Master of Go

Yasunari Kawabata, Edward Seidensticker

Vintage Books, May 28, 1996 - Fiction - 208 pages

Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other's black or white stones; it is also an essential expression of Japanese spirit. In his fictional chronicle of a match played between a revered and invincible master and a younger, more modern challenger, Kawabata captures the moment in which the immutable traditions of Japan meet the onslaught of the twentieth century. 'The master of go' is an elegy for an entire society, written with the poetic economy and psychological acumen that brought Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature.

What people are saying

Review: The Master of Go

User Review  - umberto - Goodreads

Reading this novel by Kawabata is, I think, a bit different from reading his other three, namely, "Snow Country", "Thousand Cranes", and "The Sound of the Mountain". One of the reasons is that it ...

Review: The Master of Go

User Review  - Steve Cox - Goodreads

This is a very quiet book, in a good way. The aging Go master plays his retirement match against a young challenger. There is intentionally no suspense as to the outcome. We know early on that the ...

Contents

• Shusai Master of Go twentyfirst in the Honnimbo: 3
• 42 on: 6
• A day after the end of that halfyear contest the: 9

About the author

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968. His 1937 novel "Snow Country "secured his position as one of Japan's leading authors. Alisa Freedman is a visiting assistant professor of Japanese literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Donald Richie--novelist, critic, essayist, travel writer, and former director of the Japanese cinema collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York--is author of "The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Master of Go; Vintage International
• Authors: Yasunari Kawabata, Edward Seidensticker
• Translated by: Edward Seidensticker
• Edition: reprint, illustrated
• Publisher: Vintage Books, 1996
• ISBN: 0679761063, 9780679761068
• Length: 208 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary; Japan; Japan - Fiction; Literary Criticism / Asian / General