Death in Midsummer

Ten tales of loss and longing, from one one Japan’s greatest writers

It was the height of summer, and there was anger in the rays of the sun

A summer holiday that turns to tragedy; a moonlit journey to fulfil a wish; a couple’s unusual way of making a living; a young lieutenant who ends his life; a night of infidelities. This selection contains nine short stories and one modern Noh play by one of Japan’s greatest writers. Selected by Mishima himself for translation, they are by turns tender and delicate, ironic and shocking, showing the strange pull between duty and desire, death and beauty.

‘He can be funny, even hilarious, but he is also capable of plunging into the dark psychic depths achieved by Hitchcock’ New York Times Book Review

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker, Ivan Morris, Donald Keene and Geoffrey W. Sargent