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Star

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780241383476

  • Length: 96  Pages

  • Dimensions: 161mm x 7mm x 111mm

  • Weight: 63g

  • RRP: £2.99

Star

A haunting novella of fame and disillusionment by a Japanese literary icon

All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention. They would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells "action"; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions.

Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film Afraid to Die, this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams as the absurdity of his existence comes sharply into focus. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there ever any escape from how we are seen by others?

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780241383476

  • Length: 96  Pages

  • Dimensions: 161mm x 7mm x 111mm

  • Weight: 63g

  • RRP: £2.99

Reviews

  • A stunning addition to the oeuvre of one of postwar Japan's greatest storytellers

    Wall Street Journal

  • Mishima's novels exude a monstrous and compulsive weirdness, and seem to take place in a kind of purgatory for the depraved

    Angela Carter

  • Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist

    New York Times

  • Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway

    Life Magazine

  • A writer of immense energy and ability

    Time Out

  • A startlingly modern, hypervisual jewel; it could be a really interesting movie. It was mesmerizing, seeming to fall in my hands from an alternative sky.

    Patti Smith

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About the Author

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor – the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless short stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he acted. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves; Enjo, which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst For Love and the short-story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On November 25th, 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

Yukio Mishima

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Extracts

Beautiful Star extract

A tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs; read an extract from Beautiful Star.
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Competitions

Win a VINTAGE Japanese book bundle
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Recommendations

Five Japanese classics to read now

The 2019 Rugby World Cup and the Japan 2020 Olympics are drawing an international spotlight on Japan and, to celebrate, VINTAGE have issued special editions of five masterpieces that span a century and offer a perfect entry point for contemporary Japanese fiction.

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