THE DANCING GIRL OF IZU and Other Stories

by Yasunari Kawabata ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 1997

An attractive collection of 23 stories, many written as early as the 1920s, by the Japanese Nobel Prize-winner (Palm-of-the-Hand, 1988, etc.) who took his own life in 1972. Brief prose poems and fairy-tale-like vignettes (""The Princess of the Dragon Palace,"" ""Frightening Love"") are intriguingly balanced here by presumably autobiographical pieces, several about the deaths of loved ones. And two longer tales show Kawabata at his best: the title story, about a traveling student's strange meeting with an itinerant performing troupe, and the moving ""Diary of My Sixteenth Year,"" in which a schoolboy's relationship with his moribund grandfather grants him a precocious understanding of ""the things that human beings lose to the past.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Counterpoint

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997

Categories: FICTION