The Sound of Waves

Yukio Mishima

Penguin, 1980 - Fiction - 182 pages

A poor fisherman longs to meet the young and beautiful pearl diver who has enthralled the Japanese village

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - dbsovereign - LibraryThing

A tale that is told so beautifully (even in translation) that one forgets how depressing it is...a Romeo/Juliet living in a small fishing village, their doomed affair is just heart wrenching. At a certain point, it was so sad that it made my teeth hurt.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - idiotgirl - LibraryThing

Audible. Driving back to the northwest. A spare, lovely novel. Restrained. Story set on islands near Japan. Fishermen. Pearl divers. Set in the 1950s, post war (the boy's father has died from American plane fire). Young love. Definitely recommend. (This is one that needs a half star.)

Contents

• Section 1: 3
• Section 2: 11
• Section 3: 26
• Section 4: 33
• Section 5: 55
• Section 6: 64
• Section 7: 82
• Section 8: 109
• Section 9: 119
• Section 10: 135
• Section 11: 147
• Section 12: 166
• Section 13: 176

About the author

Yukio Mishima, the pseudonym for Hiraoka Kimitake, was born in Tokyo in 1925. His work covers many styles: poetry, essays, modern Kabuki ja Noh drama, and novels. Among his masterpieces are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the four-volume novel Sea of Fertility, which outlines the Japanese experience in the 20th century. Each of the four volumes in this series has a distinct title--Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and Five Signs of a God's Decay--and they were published over a six-year period, from 1965-1970. Mishima's plays include Tenth Day Chrysanthemum, and the Kabuki piece The Moon Like a Drawn Bow. Although Mishima was been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he never received it. Nevertheless, he is considered by many critics as one of the most important Japanese novelists of the 20th century. Yukio Mishima died by his own hand in 1970, committing seppuku (ritual disembowelment).

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Sound of Waves; The Perigee Japanese Library
• Author: Yukio Mishima
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 1980
• ISBN: 0399504877, 9780399504877
• Length: 182 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General