Book description
For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of
charm and shrewdness. But when the she falls in love with one of her
clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business
in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her
independent spirit, and eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage
and the demands of her irrepressible vitality.
After the Banquet
is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare. 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 stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he
performed. 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 25
November 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.
